I don't think that these 12 hour days are full of productivity. My partner spent some time in the summer as a researcher at a key lab in Shanghai. She observed that researchers put in long hours (if the boss was around) but often spent time on their phones and repeated experiments mindlessly.

Kai-Fu Lee discusses this culture in the Founders Fund podcast Anatomy of Next. He suggests that many of the workers will be the only ones in their family who have high paid office jobs. The rest work in factories, farms and other manual labor. Thus, they see an opportunity to be successful and lift their family out of poverty.