Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

I'm just reacting to the point about tutoring as a proxy for valuing education, when in my experience (living in China, and with my extended Chinese family), this mostly results from pressure over the Gaokao. In the US, college admissions aren't so test focused, indeed, a lot of colleges don't even require the SAT/ACT or AP scores for application.

> And, despite paying lip service to free questioning and rebellion, Western schooling consists almost entirely of intensive training in obedience and conformism

Yes, K-12 is mostly about indoctrinating kids into the requirements of society. Nevertheless, Western kids rebel against their parents and school, and media even celebrates this rebellion. Moreover, a growing number of parents commit to alternative K-12 schooling. I sent my kids to Montessori schools when it was possible.

> But I think that's more a matter of the surrounding society than the school system

The school system is a reflection of the surrounding society. If we were analyzing a country where most of the schools were religious schools that drilled a religious book, we'd obviously view the structure of the school as based on the values of the society. To the extent that K-12 education strips kids of their individualities and passions and independence, as it happens in both the US and China, the degree of harshness is substantially more in Asia in general. US school kids come home and after homework (if they do it), tend to play. Asia is renown for kids finishing school, then beginning after-school education, tutors, etc some of them study from 13-16 hrs/day in junior year.

My son is a senior in HS, his first class is 9am, he gets home at 3:30. He has 1hr lunch, and 1hr during the school day of advisory/study hall (tutoring). 2hrs of homework a day max. So about 8-9 hrs of study total. His peer in Shanghai is doing almost double that.

Practically, PRC can simply mine TW ports, crater run ways, via glide mines and MLRS all within PRC borders (that can hit anywhere in TW + adjacent). US + co doesn't remotely have the demining, sealift or airlift capacity to logistically support TW off PRC waters. Nor will they convince any commercial fleet/insurers to go on suicide mission of... invading One China territory. It's like how Operation Starvation crippled JP during WW2. Except TW is much smaller than JP and PRC is a much larger industrial power than US during wartime. PRC can unilaterally and trivially render TW inaccessible - it can blockade TW with basically zero sustained naval or air effort.

And really if US/JP try to run the blockade they're legally invading Chinese sovereign territory and it's WW3 anyway. TW may have chance to survive a PLA invasion, but IMO no chance of breaking a PRC blockade. Folks are grossly underestimating the proponderous of advantages PRC has near her coast.

But I do think Chinese culture has greatly valued education (and standardized testing) for about 20 times as long as the gaokao has existed; in that sense, too, the school system is a reflection of the surrounding society, not only vice versa. It's true that the "education" in question has often been more a matter of convincingly repeating established doctrines than of repudiating them, and often valued because it was a gateway to material gain, by way of standardized testing.

On the other hand, I never see the kind of anti-intellectualism that got Trump elected in the US (and Hitler in Germany) in the families of my Chinese friends. I know it can exist in Chinese culture — the Cultural Revolution had plenty of it — but it doesn't seem to be a dominant thread the way it is in the US. And this is true of families from Taiwan, too; it's not just a Mainland Chinese reaction to the CR. They just don't seem to have the nerd/egghead stereotype.

(And I still don't understand why that other person thinks Chinese people don't spend enough on schooling or why they would consume more if they did.)

China doesn’t have to storm beaches to be within shooting range.

If Taiwan were an easy conquest it would have been conquered. It’s not impossible that China would attempt some sort of belligerence, but Taiwan is capable responding to any threat with enough firepower to deter such actions.