The author seems to be stuck in a country which is rising after coming from a country which had already risen. The path to success is no cake walk, its tiring and it causes fatigue.

As as Indian this article to me on many counts also looks like the story of India. The west will find it difficult to digest but the desperation to grow forces a person to go out of his way to do and achieve things people in the west in all the comfort cannot imagine in wildest of their dreams.

>>Modern day mainland Chinese society is focused on one object: money and the acquisition thereof.

What other dreams do you think poor people have?

>>The domestic Chinese lower education system does not educate. It is a test center. The curriculum is designed to teach children how to pass them.

The issue in Asian countries which are developing is most have only one shot at doing something in life. Study your ass off or perish, there is no social security- Your parents work hard to give you a decent education and you work hard in a once in a life time opportunity to do something in life. There is no other alternative, you don't have money to do business. The national infrastructures, license problems, corruption and other stuff won't give you a second shot at business.

There fore unlike in the west where 'chase your dreams' makes sense, here it doesn't.

>>Success in exams offers a passport to a better life in the big city. Schools do not produce well-rounded, sociable, self-reliant young people with inquiring minds. They produce winners and losers. Winners go on to college or university to take “business studies.” Losers go back to the farm or the local factory their parents were hoping they could escape.

As I said before, opportunities are at a premium here. This is difficult to understand if you come from US and settle down here. You will just never get why there is such a mad rush for opportunities.

>>The pressure makes children sick. I speak from personal experience. To score under 95 per cent is considered failure. Bad performance is punished. Homework, which consists mostly of practice test papers, takes up at least one day of every weekend. Many children go to school to do it in the classroom. I have seen them trooping in at 6am on Sundays. In the holidays they attend special schools for extra tuition, and must do their own school’s homework for at least a couple of hours every day to complete it before term starts again. Many of my local friends abhor the system as much as I do, but they have no choice. I do. I am lucky.

Whoa this is nothing. In India while I did by second year of pre university college, I practically slept only for 3 hours a day for the whole year. Before going to the exam I cried. Because my whole years worth of hard work depended on this one exam! During my engineering college days, I've spend endless nights studying without sleeping. Same with school.

As a software engineer I've gone a whole week without sleep. And that was perfectly acceptable. My dad used to tell me, to consider myself lucky to even deserve the opportunity to go and work at a software company. Hence anything was acceptable.

>>An option is to move back to a major Chinese city and send our children to an expensive international school—none of which offer boarding—but I would be worried about pollution, and have to get a proper job, most likely something to do with foreign business to China, which my conscience would find hard.

Good schooling is shit expensive. Hence parents almost always send their kids to a local mediocre school. But warn them sternly to study very hard or they will have no future.

>>China does not nurture and educate its youth in a way that will allow them to become the leaders, inventors and innovators of tomorrow, but that is the intention.

Thats for the next generation. The first generation, like my Dad's. They had only one goal- 'First get your kids somewhere, let them take it from there on.'

The author is clearly stuck in a massive cultural conflict in his brain. He wants China to remain where it was, a mediocre country compared to his original homeland. He doesn't understand the cultural pressures of families in developing nations. He doesn't understand those countries are trying to go to where, his homeland is now. He clearly belongs to his native culture, where bulk of the growth work is already done, and people are just building on top of it. Where you can get to enjoy foreign vacations, passion based work environments, freedom to not worry about basic stuff like food, clothing and shelter.