Maybe? Another possible explanation is that some people try to correlate income in USD to education levels. It's not a direct comparison since the cost for edu

Maybe? Another possible explanation is that some people try to correlate income in USD to education levels. It's not a direct comparison since the cost for education is also cheaper in China. Also since K-12 is almost free (at least meals are not included 20 years ago when I was a kid), parents just send kids there. In recent years the trend is that even assembly factories require high school education, bachelor preferred... That's another interesting topic though.