If I stayed here and had kids, I would not want to subject them to the Chinese education system. While I find it amazing and quite charming that Chinese people can recite so many classical poems from memory, the emphasis on memorisation of huge chunks of texts is enormously time consuming and unnecessary. I have seen the pressure that the Chinese kids are put under, and it is really nothing to do with the population being too big as most seem to believe, (China has a relatively low unemployment rate, so I don’t see how this is pressure is a result of competition which does not exist outside of China) but due to the nature of the examination system itself. I would not want my kids to have their youth wasted on pointless rote memorisation.

And besides that, I do not want my kids to be brainwashed or to have the development of their critical faculties hindered by Chinese education. For example, we had a class at my university called 现代中国专题。Some of it was truly ridiculous, e.g., Q:“毛泽东对中国最大的贡献是什么？“ （What was Mao Zedong’s greatest contribution towards China?）

A: 他解决了中国挨打的问题。 （he solved the “China being beaten” problem）

Q: 邓小平对中国最大的贡献是什么？（What was Deng Xiaoping’s greatest contribution towards China?）
A: 他解决了中国挨饿的问题。 （he solved the “China being hungry” problem）

The problem with this isn’t that these viewpoints are “wrong” as such, but that these are actually very broad questions with a lot of subjectivity, and to have a simple answer which is right or wrong is just ludicrous. Another response on this thread pointed out the tendency to some Chinese to speak with authority on things they clearly don’t understand, (e.g. what a “typical American” looks like, Westerners do not value peace, Westerners are individualistic and Chinese are collectivist, the West is capitalist and China is socialist) ultimately stems from this style of education of memorising cherry picked “facts,” which are often opinions, not facts. This is not simply an issue of them teaching different facts to western schools, but of questioning these “facts” not being permitted. In history class in the West, you can challenge the teacher and you are rewarded for reading more widely than the set textbook. As an undergraduate I had a rebellious streak that manifested in a fascination with revolution, so some of my undergraduate essays on Chinese essay even took a fairly pro-Mao perspective and these got good grades because the arguments were backed up with evidence. However, taking a stance so against the mainstream viewpoint in Chinese school just would not be tolerated in the same way.

Likewise, I don’t get the insistence that China needs to have an authoritarian government because it is too big and has too many people so is difficult to manage, while at the same time insisting it must be united to be strong and nothing is more evil than separatism. These two viewpoints are self-contradictory - if a small nation can more easily have better, more humane governance, then doesn’t it follow that China would be a better place as several small nations? (NB I don’t necessarily agree with this, but the prevalence of logical absurdities that go unchallenged is a symptom of the style of education - the idea that China’s political system is the way it is as a response to China’s large population, rather than being based on the Leninist model as a (failed) way to build a worker’s state is simply false, historically and factually. While you could make the case that this hasn’t been reformed because of the large population, this isn’t the point that is generally being made. And before anyone comes in with a “well but…” here, my point is not whether the arguments are right or wrong, but that they are repeated unquestioningly and are not open to debate.)