I had a lot of friends during college who went to school in China. And I had a lot of Chinese CS/Math professors who would often say things like "We teach this

I had a lot of friends during college who went to school in China. And I had a lot of Chinese CS/Math professors who would often say things like "We teach this to 12 year olds in China". My Chinese friends would laugh when i asked them if that was true. They said that sure they covered it, but they just memorized algorithms, and no one really understood the concepts. I don't think that looking at math textbooks is going to tell you all that much about the way math is actually taught. You're not going to see any of the official and unofficial performance incentives that can alter the way material is taught.