I bet Vox doesn ' t even write an article that we did a proObama feature . <| sep |> Yep and if democracies could be trusted to always elect the best person for the job there would be no question of their efficacy . Corruption is a fundamental problem with authoritarian regimes such as the CCP ' s there has never been a legalistic regime that has managed to keep corruption in check and there have been far more transparent , legalistic regimes than the CCP . The issue with a large standardized education system where we pressure students from a young age to succeed is that not all students are the same . Many students are not truly able to completely embrace academia until they hit university age or older . You would be chopping off huge groups of potential high achievers by insisting that they reach academic maturity from such a young age . Likewise , many students capable of achieving at such a high level from such a young age may not be able to keep up that level of performance for their entire academic career or may find they have no interest in the areas they excel in . Virtually every developed nation has some system where students may attend universities based on merit free of charge , this is not a novel idea for China but yes it is a step in the right direction . It does not however address Chinese universities utter lack of capability of producing the kind of people that would put China on par with the west . The zealous nationalism typified by most Chinese universities , i . e very few foreign professors and virtually none receiving tenure , studiespapers being funded for politicalnationalist reasons rather than for scientific merit , otherwise excellent teachersstudents being excluded for entirely political reasons is an issue that no amount of reform can overcome and far from being dealt with in a responsible manner is viewed as a positive trait by many within China . It stinks of the kind of nonscientific thinking that has caused some leading African universities to spend grant money on investigating claims of witchcraft and magic . The key issue with the Chinese view on education is that smart is an innate , quantifiable attribute . The research patently proves this claim to be false . In practice the effect is even more pronounced that research would imply . Nations who ' s academic performance is off the charts high when measured by standardized testing , fail to produce exceptionalproductive people at the same rate as the failing US system , let alone the Nordic or central European systems . The issue with Chinese education is not one of allocated resources most Chinese schools I have seen , even in rural areas , are better equipped than many US schools it is the culture of education present in China which has barely changed since the Tang dynasty which at the time was revolutionary , so revolutionary in fact it was adopted by virtually every developed nation and developed into the current systems in place across the world today . I can think of several huge paradigm shifts that have occurred in the greater education community since just the 60 ' s and infinitely more since the last century . These shifts have been caused by constant debate and refinement and have led to this vast disparity in outcomes between western nations and other similarly developed nations who hold antiquated views of attainment and education . Just to be clear , I ' m not saying that China or the Chinese people or even traditional Chinese culture are inferior at producing exceptional people . From my experience , the average Chinese student is far more driven than their foreign peers . We just need to look at academic outcomes for recent culturally Chinese immigrants to western nations too see that there are definitely some aspects of the culture that should be adapted into modern educational theory , but the fact that Chinese students fare better in western institutions than they would have done in Chinese institutions is a wake up call for China that it has been ignoring for almost 400 years . edit wow that was a wall of text , sorry . tldr you are woefully misinformed about best practice when it comes to educating people .