[deleted]
A culture of hierarchy and following orders from above is orthogonal to whether or not people understand the issue. You say "they rarely ask why" but that doesn't mean they don't think why.
I know in American business it's common to agitate and question your superiors at all levels, but that doesn't necessarily translate to better outcomes. For example, the American military doesn't work that way (it works much more akin to Chinese businesses, really). And the American military is quite good.
edit: I say this as an MIT grad who has been mightily impressed by Tsinghua students. I still think MIT is better, of course, ;-) but it doesn't surprise me that Tsinghua is at the top of the list this year.