
Originally Posted by dear giant:
I think that you're falling or have fallen victim to the constant barrage of "Us / the West is dying!!!" propaganda that the media feeds us here. Soviet citizens were fed similar sorts of news during the Cold War era. For its part, Japan was going to eat the USA alive in the 1980s.
China is currently replicating some of the feats of Soviet and American manned spaceflight c. the 1960s and 70s. Good for them. Meanwhile, the United States is launching a bigger, tougher Mars rover later this week and has explored the Solar System more thoroughly than any other nation (see
NASA - Current Missions).
I highly doubt that China, in its current form, will do very much in space after it ticks enough boxes in terms of what other nations have accomplished to satisfy its leaders that the country has "arrived". The curiosity, drive to explore, etc. just isn't there culturally.
As for Mainland and HK students kicking American kids' butts in mathematics on standardized tests, standardized test / exam scores are what robotized young folks are good at. Unfortunately, most of those high scorers will go on to work as insurance agents, shop assistants, and the like. The ones with passion mostly emigrate to places like ... the United States and other Western countries.
Check out the lists of top-scoring countries in
TIMSS and
PISA. Does innovation come to mind? Not really, right?