The Organization of Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), a club of the world's developed and industrialized countries, conducts a survey every 3 years of high school students' performance in reading, math and science. This is done through its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Its 2009 survey, covering half a million students from 60+ countries, was done and the results were released yesterday. Some stunning result: students from "Confucian Asia" like China (represented by Shanghai), Singapore, Hong Kong, S. Korea and Japan, excelled.
Here's the chart from The Economist. The only non-Confucian Asian students in the top 5 in reading, were those from Finland and Canada. The students from tiger Asian economies also excelled in math.
American students ranked 11th in reading score, and 28th in math. German students ranked 14th in reading and 13th in math. While British students ranked 19th in reading and 23rd in math.
The seeds of top engineers, scientists, educators and researchers around the world in the future have been planted. They are in Confucian Asian economies.
If China will keep its friendliness to market policies, then the millions of Chinese entrepreneuers and businessmen will be able to tap their millions of highly-educated countrymen.
If China will reverse the pro-market policies and revert back to strict socialist policies, then either it will lose the economic momentum, or it will lose its highly-educated citizens to companies abroad that value private property rights, rule of law and free market policies.