I find it helpful to remove cultural origins and model it purely based on opportunity, and it makes a lot of sense. In this instance, take away Chinese / Americ

I find it helpful to remove cultural origins and model it purely based on opportunity, and it makes a lot of sense. In this instance, take away Chinese / American from the article and reanalyze it with the kind of education they received. The fact is that scientific research has extremely poor returns on investment, with high specialization requirements and little opportunity for wealth, fame, or impact. Ground-breaking discovery in niche fields tends to favor one dimensional specialists over generalists, whereas in pretty much any other industry, being multi-talented can be extremely impactful. In a wealthy country where most people are educated to be multi-talented, it's suboptimal for them to go into research because there are so many better opportunities. Whereas if you're a country with a billion people but doesn't have the luxury to educate people to be multi-faceted, if you have the talent to be a researcher, it's a great opportunity for you. An illustration in RPG terms: well educated, multi-faceted individual (can be from the US or China, doesn't matter) communication: 70/100 networking: 70/100 leadership: 70/100 scientific discovery: 70/100 (with science aptitude) communication: 70/100 networking: 70/100 leadership: 70/100 scientific discovery: 90/100 A not-as-well educated person communication: 40/100 networking: 50/100 leadership: 30/100 scientific discovery: 40/100 with science aptitude: communication: 40/100 networking: 50/100 leadership: 30/100 scientific discovery: 90/100 It's just a lot more common to find the latter in a country with 1.3 billion people, and the former in the richest country in the world. For the latter example, being good at science opens up opportunities for them. But for the well educated, they probably have a lot better opportunities within their reach. And with the prevailing metric of a good researcher being novel discoveries or breakthroughs, they both have an equal chance to make contribution to the field, so there's no incentives for the well educated person (Chinese or American) to pursue research.