[casey2]

Sadly, not the US either. It entirely cultural. Starting around Victorian times wealthy people took great pride in children who didn't work, fast forward to the industrial revolution a symbol of poverty was the child being the main breadwinner. Combine both of those class signalling methods and you get children who are locked out of work, but this manifests as forced busywork, electives, sports & music

In China since this class doesn't exist and forced busywork for class signaling is largely driven underground due to government policies driven young people just work on whatever the government policy says, which right now is tech. Hence you see smart young people getting into tech. While in the US they do Finance (if they built up the right portfolio to be allowed in the elite jobs club), speedrunning (if they didn't). Ironically the current US look a lot like imperial China, while China looks like the US of the late 1800s, but fully vertically integrated