Study while you live
The greatest resource available to China, and all of Asia, is its human resources. Asia is a true mine of human capital, where academic performance is encouraged and rewarded. The OECD PISA report measures, every three years and in 79 countries around the world, the academic level of 15-year-old students in three key educational areas: mathematics, reading and science. In its latest edition (2018), China and Asian countries dominated the highest positions in the ranking. In this same report, Spain obtained an average mark below the world average and the worst of all it has ever obtained. A 15-year-old Spanish student has an academic level equivalent to that of a 12-year-old Chinese boy.
Not only do Asians occupy the top positions in all the disciplines evaluated by PISA, but also their score is 15% above the world average. Although, indeed, the results of China reflected in the report are those of the richest areas of the country, Chinese academic excellence is intrinsic to its culture and extrapolated where Chinese children study. The Chinese are not born with a special genetic predisposition to intellectual brilliance, just as the DNA of the Jews cannot be used to explain their business success. The explanation, in both cases, is found in the culture of both peoples and the way they educate their young people. Spanish, English or Brazilian students of Asian parents perform above the average where they are enrolled. Confucius has a lot to do with it all.
Asia is a continent of nerds where academic success is understood more as a matter of tenacity and perseverance than of personal ability. A Chinese child studies an average of 70 hours a week. In the first place, because the teaching system promotes rote learning, but also because the competitiveness is extreme. Once again, in China, numbers matter and generate a disparity of opportunities that encourages sacrifice: even with such effort, 40% of students are not able to access university studies. For this reason, the normal thing, in China (and, in general, in all Asia), is to study 10 hours a day, to give absolute priority to the preparation of the exams or to respect - reverently - the professors and teachers. Here in China, unlike in the West, training is valued above any other attribute. Academic excellence is, in China, a primary concern for the student's parents and family members. This also extends to the treatment and social position enjoyed by Chinese teachers: the teacher continues to be a highly respected figure, a moral authority in the students' life trajectory and, in short, a referential and aspirational model. The Chinese government has succeeded in attracting a lot of talent to teachers, turning the educational profession into a well-paid and highly valued social job.
Not by chance, it is also the international Chinese students who get the best grades in the American universities of the “Ivy League” (made up of the 8 best universities in the USA) where, already, the highest proportion of researchers, doctors and professors, it begins to be that of Chinese. That also explains why, anywhere in the world, in the classes where Chinese children study, they always stand out among the best in all disciplines that involve mathematics and science. The formula for Chinese academic success is simple: on the one hand, Chinese culture has attached, since time immemorial, a capital importance - almost obsessive - to education and a learning system based on iron discipline. In addition, parents are very actively involved in the formation of their children, assuming academic performance as an effort of the whole family. In this way, education represents the largest single expenditure of each Chinese household, to which they devote up to 10 times more resources than the average in Western households. Academic training continues to be the main catalyst for opportunities in China, and Chinese parents see it as the best lever for transforming the future of their children.
"Study while you live" is one of the most famous quotes of the father of the People's Republic, Mao Zhedong. One of the great achievements of the revolutionary leader was to make the Asian giant one of the first developing countries to achieve free universal education. Today schooling reaches 99.99% of Chinese children under 13 years of age.
China is going for a long time because it has made education a priority of its State project, betting on the talent of its population as the most important investment in its future. What prosperity can you expect for those who don't make learning the linchpin of their growth strategy?
