When you're talking about China, it should be recognized that China is aggressively making its move (its "transition) into renewable energy not only because they don't have domestic sources for fossil fuels, but also because they're very well able to develop technology to meet their energy needs rather than relying upon extracting "stuff" from the ground. The country is devoted to education education education and they're now benefiting from the fruits of that emphasis.
Every three years or so, the world's 15 year olds are given an achievement test, translated into the host country's home language of course, which measures students' proficiency in math, science, and reading. I would regard "math" as being the most important fundamental skill in an increasingly technological age, and here are the results of the Math test for 2022:
Singapore 575
China 552
Taiwan 547
Hong Kong 540
Japan 536
South Korea 527
Estonia 510
Switzerland 508
Canada 497
Netherlands 493
Ireland 492
United Kingdom 489
Poland 489
Belgium 489
Denmark 489
Australia 487
Czechia 487
Austria 487
Slovenia 485
Finland 484
Latvia 483
Sweden 483
New Zealand 482
Germany 475
Lithuania 475
France 474
Spain 473
Hungary 473
Portugal 472
Italy 471
Vietnam 469
Norway 468
Malta 466
United States 465
Slovakia 464
Croatia 463
Iceland 459
...................
Source:
Comparison on national scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures students' skills in math, science, and reading.
worldpopulationreview.com
Scroll down to "PISA Math" and click on it.
So China with its enormous 1.3 billion population, which of course includes a great many non-affluent people (unlike affluent Singapore), is 2nd in the world. The United States is 33rd. Behind Malta... but at least we're ahead of Slovakia and Croatia!
So that's why American tech companies so aggressively hire Chinese engineers graduating from American universities and graduate schools, hoping that they'll agree to stay in the US under the appropriate visas (including "genius" visas).
And that's why the Chinese can do things like this that we can't (unless we're helped by the Chinese engineers mentioned last sentence):
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