"Citing further, as-yet unpublished OECD research, Mr Schleicher said: “We have actually done Pisa in 12 of the provinces in China.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.
From what I understand of the article, in most of the poorest areas of China you get sub average OECD scores. In some of them, you get scores close to the OECD average. Poor areas in China are populous (2/3 of the Chinese population live rurally). It seems to me they would substantially decrease average IQ. From this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/01/04/are-the-pisa-education-results-rigged/ it's clear that school attendance in these rural areas can be as low as 40%, and, presumably, the 60% who do attend have above average academic aptitude.
I've also seen articles describing a widespread trend in Eastern Asia of teachers making weak students stay home on days of standardized testing due to pressure on schools and teachers to perform well. However, I cannot find any of these articles now.
I'd take test scores from Eastern Asia with a big pinch of salt.
There's no evidence that asians cheat more than whites, yes they have jammers, police scanners, finger print matching in china's testing centeI'd. And have found very sophisticated cheating devices
While in the US cheating is as easy as hiring someone to take the test for you and they just walk in with a school id.
Just because nobody in the US bothers to stop cheaters doesn't mean that it isn't happening on a similar or larger scale than China.
In the US the SAT is done by a for profit private company. The free to cheat testing sites with proctors being paid minimum wage, no security guards, no security equipment is just the most profitable
Japan is the most intelligent of the main East Asian nations, barring Singapore and maybe Hong Kong/Macau. Paper should come out within the next months, hopefully.
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.
From what I understand of the article, in most of the poorest areas of China you get sub average OECD scores. In some of them, you get scores close to the OECD average. Poor areas in China are populous (2/3 of the Chinese population live rurally). It seems to me they would substantially decrease average IQ. From this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/01/04/are-the-pisa-education-results-rigged/ it's clear that school attendance in these rural areas can be as low as 40%, and, presumably, the 60% who do attend have above average academic aptitude.
Furthmore, one must consider China's infamous propensity for cheating on standardized tests: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/how-sophisticated-test-scams-from-china-are-making-their-way-into-the-us/474474/
https://world.time.com/2013/12/04/china-is-cheating-the-world-student-rankings-system/
I've also seen articles describing a widespread trend in Eastern Asia of teachers making weak students stay home on days of standardized testing due to pressure on schools and teachers to perform well. However, I cannot find any of these articles now.
I'd take test scores from Eastern Asia with a big pinch of salt.
There's no evidence that asians cheat more than whites, yes they have jammers, police scanners, finger print matching in china's testing centeI'd. And have found very sophisticated cheating devices
While in the US cheating is as easy as hiring someone to take the test for you and they just walk in with a school id.
Just because nobody in the US bothers to stop cheaters doesn't mean that it isn't happening on a similar or larger scale than China.
In the US the SAT is done by a for profit private company. The free to cheat testing sites with proctors being paid minimum wage, no security guards, no security equipment is just the most profitable
Well, what is certain is that China does not test a representative selection of their students: https://www.science.org/content/article/one-three-chinese-children-faces-education-apocalypse-ambitious-experiment-hopes-save#:~:text=Surveys%20by%20Rozelle's%20team%20have,don't%20complete%20junior%20high
Chinese students enter elite Western universities having scored excellently on English tests, without speaking English, at astounding frequencies:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/the-china-conundrum.html?pagewanted=all
Cheating is part of the culture, featured in the form of heist movies in the entertainment industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Genius
Why does this matter? New to your substack
A lot of skepticism is thrown at the chinese iq estimate, given that I think it’s (somewhat) legit, I defend it.
What do you make of estimates of Japanese IQ?
Japan is the most intelligent of the main East Asian nations, barring Singapore and maybe Hong Kong/Macau. Paper should come out within the next months, hopefully.
Looking forward to it.