IQ of China: 2nd look
IQ of China: 2nd look
97-104 - exact average not clear due to low quality data
I received some criticisms of my previous post in a private channel, so I decided to revisit my assessment of China’s national IQ. The critic doesn’t have a “public identity”, so I decided to screen out his name when posting his messages.
My critic adjusted the Lynn studies for an assumed difference between Chinese in Shanghai/Beijing and the rest of the mainland by 9-10 points, leading to a median estimate of 97.5 for all of China.
To summarize, he claims that after adjusting for elite sampling in Lynn’s studies, the IQ of China was estimated to be close to the European average (97.5).
It would also be possible to do the same for the Chinese PISA results. 4 provinces have had their scores publicized in the 2018 PISA results, and those are Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zheijang. These provinces scored .69 SD above the US White mean according to Steve Sailer, which translates to a national IQ of 110.35. If the national averages for each provinces are known, then it is possible to estimate China’s IQ mathematically.
This can be done either using:
The CFPS, which has data on IQ and province of birth
The Chinese Iodine study
I had previously run into issues analyzing the CFPS, though I have reason to believe these results I gathered from it are legitimate, as they correspond reasonably closely with the results from the Iodine study:
These 4 countries performed about 6.64 [(113.17+107.72+104.32+101.37)/4] (note - the CFPS results are arbitrarily normed at 104) points above the national average - subtracting 6.64 from the PISA estimate of 110.35 results in an estimate of 103.75. The people behind the basic skills dataset did roughly the same thing and came to an estimate of about 104.8.
This is an overestimate, as western Chinese provinces are not properly represented in this sample, so the difference between B-S-J-Z and the other provinces is deflated.
The same can be done using the IQ estimates from Iodine study, which samples Chinese provinces in a more representative fashion. In the Iodine study, B-S-J-Z scored 9.8 points above the national mean [(114.1+115.3+115.8+109)/4-103.75], leading to a national IQ estimate of 100.55.
Overall, the true mean IQ of China is probably close to 102 or so, when you consider the northeast-southwest genetic cline and the fact that China is not as developed as other East Asian nations. While it is unclear whether differences in parental resources/status cause differences in intelligence in western countries, between countries they are clearly a causal factor. Sub-Saharan Africa has a measured IQ of about 70 and Black Americans have an IQ of about 85 - a difference of 15 points, only about 4 of which can be explained by admixture alone, as American Blacks ~20% European.
Other reasons to believe the Chinese IQ is close to Japan and Korea:
Chinese Americans get similar SAT/ACT scores to other Asian Americans:
This applies to IQ as well, though the sample sizes are not as good.
They have high polygenic scores for educational attainment as well as other asians, though their 1000 genome samples are not particularly representative (I’m surprised this article has not caught on!).
The argument that China's poorest regions are doing badly on PISA is an old one, and the guy running PISA dismissed it more than a decade ago.
You can read the whole story here: https://www.ft.com/content/20770bf6-01e7-11e0-b66c-00144feabdc0 (just use www.archive.vn or some other paywall remover).
Here's the key quote:
"Citing further, as-yet unpublished OECD research, Mr Schleicher said: “We have actually done Pisa in 12 of the provinces in China. Even in some of the very poor areas you get performance close to the OECD average.”
Note that this was the 2009 PISA round, back when China was much poorer than today. So it is very unlikely that the poorer regions of China would do worse than they did back then given much better funding and better health outcomes etc.
IMO, your original estimate of 103-104 IQ is most likely. The mainland Han Chinese are genetically almost identical to the Han Chinese on Taiwan and I don't see anyone claiming the Taiwanese are double-digit IQ.
The argument that Chinese people are poorer because they have lower IQ is a muddled argument. A substantial portion of their relative poverty is simply borne out of the fact that smaller East Asian countries like Taiwan or Korea are essentially US vassals, which is often very lucrative.
China is simply too big for that, which means they have to re-invent a lot of low-margin industries because they'd get sanctioned otherwise. Their own domestic market is also too huge to rely solely on exports. A headache the smaller East Asians never had to face and could just focus on the high-value add sectors while engaging in massive currency manipulation even as Uncle Sam closed his eyes due to their vassalage.
That said, I think East Asians generally speaking underperform relative to their IQ. You can see this in a variety of ways, e.g. elite science production in the Nature Index (East Asians do worse on a per capita basis) or even nominal GDP per capita. Japan should be as rich as Switzerland given their high IQ. It just seems they have lower entrepreneurial and innovative capacities. It's certainly not an intelligence issue.
Why does this matter? New to your substack