Citation needed :)
As a Chinese native who has friends in almost all provinces across China, I just don't see Chinese is less educated than US. Same K-12 education for almost all (exceptions are rare).
Did you go to a Western university? A good one? And now work at some Western company? You can add atypical points for all of those.
Most of the Chinese people I know are fine in terms of education, around the same as any other demographic. But most of them I know from a top European university, or from highly skilled work in China. Most of China is not like that at all.
I was born in a city ranked 45th in China by population (from wikipedia). K-12 is 100%. My grandpa lives in a very small village with annual income just a few thousand dollars, K-12 is also 100%. My close cousins come from the same small village, now bank staffs and doctors.
I have friends who's family so poor that the roof got torn away by a typhoon. And I have friends whose parents are simply peasants.
My friend group is definitely biased since I graduated from one of the top universities, but they are selected by exams, so many families are actually not wealthy. In China money usually cannot help you directly on exams, people need to study hard.
Hmm, another thing I'm curious is that what gives the original post the impression that "Chinese people are uneducated". That's a rare heard haha.
Propaganda? The stats I have seen all state that Americans are the uneducated ones in this comparison.
It's not a direct comparison since the cost for education is also cheaper in China. Also since K-12 is almost free (at least meals are not included 20 years ago when I was a kid), parents just send kids there.
In recent years the trend is that even assembly factories require high school education, bachelor preferred... That's another interesting topic though.
This is exactly what I mean; the relatively advantaged Chinese are under the impression that they are the average. They're not at all. The average Chinese person lives no place they're likely to escape for the Bay Area. Most people can't even escape to a normal life in a tier 1 city within China.
I mentioned my grandpa, he lives in a small village (1~2k people?), I would say it is something like rural Fresno maybe.
If you can have supporting numbers, I can help explain.
I don't think K-12 attainment is an appropriate metric. Like I said elsewhere it's like comparing hygiene standards by saying we all have access to soap. But that's the most basic standard we can achieve.
I think if you compare the % of Chinese who go to world-class universities, it's a lot more relevant. China has maybe 2 or 3 such universities, so saying it's equal and fair because you have the gaokao or whatever doesn't make much sense. The biggest intake for world class universities is rich Chinese kids going to the West, not poor kids from the village going to Tsinghua. If you managed to do that then great for you, really, but it's not an average story.
Even if we don't want to go that high-end, tertiary educational attainment at any calibre of university in China is much much lower than in the US.
I think there are good things about the Chinese approach to education, but it's kind of silly to say they've caught up to the US and others.
> I think it's pretty significant that they are able to run a country with that demographics most of whom were not even educated.
and then eventually switch to
> I don't think K-12 attainment is an appropriate metric. Like I said elsewhere it's like comparing hygiene standards by saying we all have access to soap. But that's the most basic standard we can achieve
> I think if you compare the % of Chinese who go to world-class universities, it's a lot more relevant
This seems like a major shift in goal-posts. If your concept of "uneducated" means not going to a world-class university, then most of the world, including most people in the US are "uneducated".
It's trivial to pick a relevant metric and look up the median value for China. A quarter of the people there live on less than $5/day. They're not swanning off to do a Masters at MIT any time soon. They're not even able to move to the better cities within China, for the most part.
This person is a total anomaly. Taking them as representative is quite ridiculous and rather insulting to the hundreds of millions "with a K-12 education" that somehow are still living in abject poverty with no opportunities. It's an arbitrary and meaningless claim to make. It's like saying China and America have the same hygiene standards because most people in both places have access to soap.
Weren't we talking about education?
But that you think you both know better than a Chinese person and didn't even bother to put in some links to facts (unlike those liked that disagree, like the Pisa test) says enough.
For example, Chinese tertiary attainment is half that of the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
Again, soap and hygiene. Since when do we compare education levels only on basic literacy and numeracy?
No, 'educated' was the term used. I'm not sure why you would think we're only talking about basic 'English' skills.
The gathered statistics are in no way comparable to Western countries which gather scores from all districts, rich and poor alike.