What makes Chinese students so successful by international standards?

Research by Australian scholars, who have been studying the 'paradox of the Chinese learner' since the 1990s, shows common perceptions of Chinese and other Asian learners are wrong.

- Peter Yongqi Gu and Stephen Dobson

There is a belief widely held across the Western world: Chinese students are schooled through rote, passive learning - and an educational system like this can only produce docile workers who lack innovation or creativity.

We argue this is far from true. In fact, the Chinese education system is producing highly successful students and an extremely skilled and creative workforce. We think the world can learn from this.

In a viral video earlier in 2024, Apple chief executive Tim Cook highlighted the unique concentration of skilled labour that attracted his manufacturing operations to China: "In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields."

To which Tesla CEO Elon Musk quickly responded on X: “True”.

When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the Shenzhen headquarters of electric vehicle manufacturer BYD earlier in 2024, he was surprised to learn the company was planning to double its 100,000-strong engineering taskforce within the coming decade.

He might not have been so surprised had he known Chinese universities are producing more than 10 million graduates every year - the foundation for a super economy.

'PARADOX' OF THE CHINESE LEARNER

Chinese learners achieve remarkable success levels compared with their Western - or non-Confucian-heritage - counterparts.

Since Shanghai first participated in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) educational evaluation in 2009, 15-year-olds in China have topped the league table three out of four times in reading, mathematics and science.