In fact, it's become so bad in the US that top universities are modifying their entry requirements to diversify away from US born Asian students who have been outscoring most everyone not Asian. The UC system, for example, used to replace names with numbers to avoid discriminatory biases. Standard tests and HS school results led to East Asians dominating not only STEM studies, but most other fields as well, except sports. On the East Coast, Harvard was sued when it became clear that they discriminated against applicants with Asian sounding names because those whose name had been westernized were accepted in greater numbers than the others. The UC system has now decided to eliminate standard tests from entry evaluation, instead choosing to give priority to subjective measures such as background and determination. While this may appear to be geared towards promoting African Americans and Latinos who are usually underrepresented, the reality is that it's made to help primarily white middle class kids who were most affected by Asian displacing them with persistent better scores. The fact is, Asians are not better than any one else at STEM studies, it's that they work their butts off in ways that westerners have totally forgotten how to. And I'm not saying that Asians are right either, simply that they followed the standards, beat everyone to the standard and then the standard was modified to help the white kids. Sounds familiar? It's the same frustration that whites have against those who wanted to modify the standard for African Americans and Latinos but now find it totally valid because they no longer dominate top college entry requirements. By the way, the only whites who manage to match Asian kids are Jewish kids who, like them, understand that hard work is the only way to recognition. Again, Asian are no better at anything than anyone else. It's their culture of hard work and primacy of education that led to such results, in areas where many hours and years of study is required to reach the next level. So will China lead the US in tech? Wrong tense, they're already there but the US will produce outstanding tech as well with much help of US born and foreign born Asian students.
I think what the US universities are looking for today is well-roundedness and not just dedication to studies. Anybody can be dedicated to studying and I do want to emphasize ANYBODY but not everybody can be well-rounded to be well developed in all aspects of life. So what the universities in the US is saying is that it would rather admit somebody who is 80% in all aspects of life rather than 100% in just studying. Cuz if you are only able to study and work and are not able to do or enjoy anything else or have no independent thoughts of your own then all you are at best is just a machine and machines are replaceable and dispensable. What these universities want are people who have what it takes to be leaders.
To lead in STEM you need PhDs in those studies, something that Asian nations produce in far larger numbers than the US. You're countering my point that the brightest stay home by naming Xi's daughter who studied at Harvard and received a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology... if you can't see that you're off subject, that's your problem.
The Asian model of overworking and overeducating their kids doesn't really work all that well. In most cases a Bachelor degree is plenty of education to pursue a successful career in IT. A truly successful solution in IT requires innovative thinking, social skills, and working smart. I think the 4 years in Uni helps but beyond that only highly specialized niche jobs. The proof is in the pudding; China has had to rely on stealing intellectual property to build most of their so called "success" in IT. That tells you a lot. Now if you are referring to leading these bs lists sure there are ways to register high on them as a nation. Education factories per say. And maybe in China they have no choice so far they have so many people and considerable need to develop domestic talent fast.
The real competition in many areas of technology are other western nations. Asia does well in manufacturing and some hardware aspects because labour is cheap and they invested heavily in these areas. But IT if anything is moving to more personal models that demand different skill sets. What we are seeing now is government interference in China is greatly harming the successes they do have which is highly problematic for them moving forward.
They score higher on aptitude tests, statistically speaking. We have to be careful attributing character proficiencies ("they work harder") or deficiencies because it suggests character problems ("they're lazy") in communities at the other end of the scale, worsening their problems.
And also what's most interesting is that the three most successful innovators in the world were university dropouts, one a dropout from a doctorate degree. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg both dropped out of Harvard. Elon Musk dropped out of the doctorate program from Stanford. Jack Ma applied to Harvard 10 times and never got accepted. It just shows education and especially education from "prestigious" institutions is not the only way to succeed. And there are doctorate degree holders from Harvard who become taxi drivers or work in the fast food industry flipping burgers. And education is not the guaranteed path to success. Yeah of course in China, these people will probably be able to get a job and probably be even be working in institutions. China just creates these special environments where they are shielded from the outside world and have everything catered to them so the government just harvests their brain while they have no life, no interest, no independent thoughts of their own. This is not what the West wants for its people. China can have all the tech "leading" the US, its only arch-enemy LOL, but what the West wants is to cultivate well-rounded individuals, people, people who have independent thoughts, people who can think for themselves.
These guys came from some good stock though. Bill Gates dad was some major banker, Zucks was from a well-to-do middle class family and Musk's family, although quite fucked, was very wealthy. Jack Ma, I don't know much about. If the west wants to create more right-side-of-the-curve entrepreneurs, the best thing that can be done is to make a larger middle class. But every action is seemingly designed to do the opposite.