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by carmen_sandiego
1905 days ago
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Rural China is the opposite of many rural places in the West. In the West, there are small towns seen as desirable, where you go to live when you're richer and have kids or just want more space. In China rural is almost always poorer. 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. |
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> 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".