{"id":3797,"date":"2026-09-25T07:51:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T06:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3797"},"modified":"2026-09-25T07:51:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T06:51:45","slug":"amazing-performance-of-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3797","title":{"rendered":"Amazing performance of China"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Recently, the OECD published a new edition of its regular survey regarding the skills of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science. Somewhat surprisingly for many Western analysts, China was&nbsp;measured as the number one country in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Good conditions for future human capital formation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2025, around 760 000 15-year-old young students from 91 countries participated in the OECD&#8217;s regular analysis of the educational standard of this age group. China clearly topped the ranking of this PISA report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am not able to have an opinion on the quality of the Chinese ranking, particularly since the quality of Chinese statistics often has been lacking in the past. However, one may assume that the OECD did their very best to achieve applicable quality levels in its latest PISA report.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For this reason, the OECD probably only wanted to include the jurisdictions of big places like Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang (BSJZ) in its research since it certainly would have been impossible to measure school performances in even larger areas or the whole country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Coming to the results of the PISA ranking, China has some real reason for being proud of its achievements &#8211; and countries like the U.S., Germany and Sweden rather the opposite. These latter countries did not climb higher than to number 12, 21 and 23 (when excluding Macao and Hong Kong). At the same time, Asian countries dominated clearly &#8211; with Singapore at 2, Japan at 4 and Korea at 6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking at the Chinese results, the following achieved points could be noted (OECD average in brackets):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Science<\/strong> 597 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(ranked as no 1, OECD 482)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Reading<\/strong> 527 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; (ranked as no 2, OECD 461)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Math&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong>612&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;(ranked as no 1, OECD 463)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Solving IT problems<\/strong> &nbsp;560 (no 2, OECD 500).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Time for the right conclusions in the West<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sure, Western countries do not always consider China as a fair trading partner. But they should also observe that Chinese decision-makers use to have clear long-term strategies. One of them regards education and the formation of human capital as a broad contributor to economic growth (see the research of Barro, Romer, Murphy, etc).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is therefore high time that politicians in, for example, Germany and Sweden wake up. The PISA survey demonstrates that improvements of competitiveness not only are an issue of costs and fair trade &#8211; but also of educational ambitions, human capital and skills.&nbsp; Finally: It should be reminded that individual ambitions play an important role as well. In China, 55 percent of the students were top performers according to the OECD, whereas in Germany and Sweden only 14 percent. These latter numbers tell us a lot!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Hubert Fromlet<\/em><\/strong><br>Affiliate Professor at the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, the OECD published a new edition of its regular survey regarding the skills of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science. Somewhat surprisingly for many Western analysts, China was&nbsp;measured as the number one country in the world. Good conditions for future human capital formation In 2025, around 760 000 15-year-old young students from 91 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>Amazing performance of China - China Research<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3797\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Amazing performance of China - China Research\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently, the OECD published a new edition of its regular survey regarding the skills of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science. Somewhat surprisingly for many Western analysts, China was&nbsp;measured as the number one country in the world. Good conditions for future human capital formation In 2025, around 760 000 15-year-old young students from 91 [&hellip;]\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3797\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"China Research\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-25T06:51:43+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-09-25T06:51:45+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Hubert Fromlet\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hubert Fromlet\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3797\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3797\",\"name\":\"Amazing performance of China - China Research\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-25T06:51:43+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-25T06:51:45+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#\/schema\/person\/3c3b67b85e96d1cc89d09dda3a189b38\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3797\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/\",\"name\":\"China Research\",\"description\":\"A discussion forum on emerging markets, mainly China  \u2013                                          from a macro, micro, institutional and corporate angle.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#\/schema\/person\/3c3b67b85e96d1cc89d09dda3a189b38\",\"name\":\"Hubert Fromlet\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?author=126\"}]}<\/script>\r\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Amazing performance of China - China Research","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3797","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Amazing performance of China - China Research","og_description":"Recently, the OECD published a new edition of its regular survey regarding the skills of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science. 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