Indian and Chinese systems certainly have tons of problem themselves, but that's a separate issue. Chinese students need to spend tons of time cracking the coll

Indian and Chinese systems certainly have tons of problem themselves, but that's a separate issue. Chinese students need to spend tons of time cracking the college entrance exam (and all exams before that). When the exam focused on memorization, the students would optimize for that, and the "top talents" selected by that exam are those best at memorization. However, the exams also changed overtime, and it is much less focused on memorization now. While these exams still receives tons of criticism nowadays, being able to perform well on these exams still correlates highly on being able to succeed in future.