[shademaan]

There is no evidence the average Chinese person is "much more capable" than the average American. And the Chinese were evidently not "diligent" enough to shut down wet markets despite years of repeated warnings from epidemiologists, nor were these civil servants forthright enough about what was happening fast enough to prevent spreading this illness to other countries.

Stereotypes in either direction are dangerous, unfounded, and unproductive.

[Der_Einzige]

Chinese Americans objectively have better SAT and ACT scores (so much so that they get screwed by affirmative action policies)

Maybe Chinese themselves aren't "more capable" but the Chinese elite who can get to America and likely the Chinese elite who stay in China are certainly "more capable"

They have a collectivist culture with "tiger parents" who force kids to study far harder than the average throughout the non Asian world. Sometimes, stereotypes are simply true.

The only reason the civil servants do dumb stuff like you describe is the CCP. If you removed literal communism and the orwellian society, they will beat us long term. Imagine that the government of Taiwan ran modern China. It would be unstoppable...

[Marsymars]

I expect you'll be hard-pressed to convince people that SAT and ACT scores are predictive at anything other than taking SAT or ACT tests unless you're controlling for an equal amount of study effort.

Basically Goodhart's law.