22 Million Geniuses — China’s Greatest Asset and America’s Missed Opportunity

The race for talents is the race for greatness

“The Duke of Zhou broke off his meals to welcome talents, and all the world turned to him in their hearts.”

— Cao Cao (155 CE – 220 CE), the de facto ruler of Northern China, stressing the importance of attracting the best

What is a country’s greatest asset? It is its people. Which of them deliver outsized impact? It is its elite talents. The crème de la crème build companies, generate knowledge, and strengthen institutions. In various ways, they determine the fortune of a country.

In the community of nations, China is in the unique position of possessing by far the largest share of top global talents. Yet they are underutilized, with many failing to reach their potential in the home country. How China may leverage this asset, and how America could tap into it, will shape the trajectory of this century and beyond.

More than Half of Geniuses Worldwide

The definition of elite talents is multidimensional, but intelligence is invariably the central feature. It is often measured indirectly via academic tests or university degrees. Mensa International restricts its membership to those in the top 2%, equivalent to an IQ of 132. For context, MIT undergraduates have a median IQ of about 129, per their SAT scores and a straightforward conversion method. This essay defines a genius as someone with an IQ of 135 or above. It corresponds to the top 1% in a normal distribution with an average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, the standard assumption for IQ distribution.

In reality, the worldwide distribution has a lower mean. Psychologist David Becker’s 2023 NIQ dataset shows a global average of 86. Assuming a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 15 for each country and territory, it yields a global genius pool of 36 million, equal to 0.5% of humanity. His painstaking per-country IQ estimates build upon a 2019 book coauthored with Richard Lynn. Their datasets are the best available. For all the controversy surrounding IQ research, it remains a highly valuable and predictive metric, especially in cross-country comparisons.

How many of the 36 million geniuses are in China? From Becker’s dataset, China has an average IQ of 103, notably higher than the global mean of 86. It translates into a gargantuan difference at the tail, giving us 22 million Chinese with an IQ above 135. With this simple calculation, we arrive at the assessment that China alone represents 61% of geniuses worldwide. In this sense, it confirms the stereotype that Chinese are a smart nation.

Contrast with India

Comparable in population, India is often viewed as a poorer and freer China. Such a simplistic view overlooks vast differences, chief among them the gulf in human capital. India’s mean IQ has fluctuated around 80 in the 21^st century, despite long-running government efforts at better schooling. Becker’s data implies, with a mean of 76 and assuming a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 15, there are only 55,000 people with an IQ of 135 or above in India. In other words, Chinese geniuses outnumber Indian geniuses by a factor of 400 to 1. Constructed school achievement scores in India are about 1.7 standard deviations below China’s, in line with the intelligence gap. Even if this IQ estimate is biased toward China by an order of magnitude, the top end of Chinese human capital still dwarfs India’s.

Can it be fixed via improved nutrition and sanitation? Indian height trends suggest lack of progress after decades of public health intervention. Child and adolescent statures have barely budged in a decade, and for some groups they have even slipped. The Indian government’s NFHS-3, NFHS-4, and NFHS-5 surveys show that the average height of men aged 20–24 declined by roughly 2 cm from 2005-06 to 2019-21.

Whether the causes are cultural or otherwise, the stagnant height and IQ data indicates the problem of low human capital is deeply entrenched in India.

What about Culture?

Despite their conformity and reserve, the Chinese people carry a strong Confucian tradition of conscientiousness and pragmatism. On the whole, they contribute to culture, not detract from it.

From the classroom to the workplace, Chinese are dedicated. In PISA 2015, students from Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong reported 55 study hours per week, the second highest globally. According to the Penn World Table, the average Chinese worker spends 42 hours per week on the job. By comparison, the average in the EU is 36 hours. The International Labour Organization’s cross-country survey work finds “over 40% of workers in China work more than 48 hours per week”, a particularly high share by global standards; the EU’s share is merely 15%.

Pragmatism is an underrated cultural trait, where Chinese excel. In the World Values Survey, China ranks as one of the least religious countries in the world, on par with Scandinavia. Whereas the decline of Christianity in the West is giving rise to secular dogmas, Chinese shun extreme ideologies: they are committed to free market, while eschewing novel views on race and gender; climate disaster or AI doom, however emotionally seductive, doesn’t resonate with them.

Empirical studies highlight the contribution of Chinese immigrant culture. In The Culture Transplant (2022), economist Garett Jones examines the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. He found places with a higher share of ethnic Chinese tend to be richer and have more market-friendly governance with lower corruption. This dovetails with the classic ethnic-Chinese network literature showing big trade boosts where Chinese networks are thicker.

Last but not least, China’s murder rate is 9% of America’s, consistent with other East Asian countries.

Talents Squandered in China

Unfortunately, China is not making the best use of its geniuses.

From Grade 1 to 12, Chinese students must pass through an intensely exam-centric and rigid education system. It culminates in the famously competitive Gaokao, or the national university entrance exam. Unlike the U.S., where the best high-school students take advanced placement courses and universities set different admissions standards, China places students into universities almost entirely through Gaokao. There is almost no room for the best students to take university-level courses early or distinguish themselves in admissions in other ways. Large emphasis is placed on memorizing classical texts, handwriting, and manual calculation. Exams are frequent and students are highly conscious of their rankings. As a result, sharp young minds are confined to a schooling system that not only is highly stressful, but imparts limited useful learning. Under Xi Jinping, the education system grew even less dynamic — curriculums became more centralized, minor admissions discretion of prestigious universities was rolled back, and international schools have been heavily curtailed.

Second, a large fraction of top Chinese graduates are absorbed into the civil service or state-owned companies, which are the least productive parts of the economy. In 2024, the central civil service exam raised the bar of registration to a tertiary degree in response to rising demand. The acceptance rate fell to a historic low of 1 in 86. In 2021, 47% of Tsinghua graduates chose the public sector. In so doing, they are largely motivated not by the desire to serve, but by state-guaranteed job security and fringe benefits. This phenomenon has been exacerbated by COVID and the long-run slowdown of the Chinese economy. Under Xi Jinping’s reorientation of the economy from market to party, the private sector is increasingly less attractive to fresh graduates. Even in entrepreneurship, the natural home for the most productive members of society, there has been a crash in venture capital funding and startup formation since 2018. Unsurprisingly, researchers find those who score higher in Gaokao are less likely to start a business and more likely to join the state sector.

Whither America?

The difficulty of legally immigrating to the U.S. has been well documented — the U.S. has long had the most restrictive skilled immigration pathways in the Anglosphere. To illustrate the absurdity: even a Chinese PhD graduate in computer science from Stanford is unable to obtain a green card automatically. Making the matter worse, the 7% per-country cap set by Congress means Chinese talents face a much longer wait time than almost all other countries’ in the immigration system.

Chinese immigrants have already shined in America despite the folly of the system. In 2024 and 2025, 4 out of the 6 members on the American teams in the International Math Olympiad have a Chinese last name. In 2022, 38% of top-tier AI researchers in the U.S. hail from Chinese universities. All the above has been achieved by a minority accounting for only 1.6% of the U.S. population.

National security is frequently cited by both parties as a rationale to limit Chinese immigration. In 2020, the Director of National Intelligence named China “the greatest threat to America today”. It was echoed later by the Biden administration. Labels aside, what is the scale of the problem? From 2018 to 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice ran an expansive program called the China Initiative to root out Chinese spies. By its own tally in 2024, only 16 China-related cases were brought after the start of the program. Similarly, a 2021 analysis by MIT Technology Review determined that just 19 of the 77 China Initiative successes involved economic espionage or IP theft. In espionage, China relies overwhelmingly on cyber capabilities, not human assets. With the internet, immigration restriction in the name of national security is increasingly irrelevant.

There is undoubtedly strong demand from Chinese youth to live and work in America. Until the pandemic, Chinese students were the largest international student cohort. Hundreds of thousands still come to the U.S. to pursue higher education, bearing high tuition and living costs. Many see it as a bridge to their American dreams. The Migration Policy Institute’s survey finds 42% of Chinese graduate students plan to obtain a green card. Among the general population, the U.S. is viewed as one of the most desirable countries to migrate to.

The U.S. used to be more proactive in attracting Chinese talents. In the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War, the U.S. funded the quasi-official nonprofit Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, to resettle educated Chinese fleeing from the Communist Party. It eventually helped 2,350 Chinese move to the U.S. after national security reviews. As one director wrote to a senior staffer, “we all want to have the best type of Chinese resettling here.” In the wake of the Tiananmen Square Incident, the U.S. passed the Chinese Student Protection Act. 54,000 Chinese students obtained green cards as a result. However, in a sign of a changing American mindset, the act requires subsequent Chinese green card quotas be reduced to offset the additions.

It’s hard to exaggerate the potential of opening up the system to more Chinese talents. Standard estimates suggest the U.S. has 3.4 million with an IQ above 135. With the enormous scale of China, merely importing 5% of Chinese geniuses would enlarge the U.S. pool by 32%. If the U.S. is serious about competing with China, it should stop forfeiting the most effective strategy — bringing in China’s best and brightest. A simple policy of granting green cards to STEM graduates from world-leading universities would go a long way. The U.K. already has such a policy in place.

Conclusion

During the Cold War with the U.S.S.R., the U.S. welcomed Soviet talents with open arms; emigration restriction was the bottleneck. Fast forward to today, in the grand competition with China, America is doing the opposite, even though China is not limiting talent outflows.

Like the Soviet Union of old, China is not unleashing the enormous potential of its people. It is sitting on a gold mine, ripe for the taking. In many ways, the outcome of the superpower rivalry hinges on the 22 million Chinese geniuses. America is blessed with being the unmatched talent magnet in the world. It would be a shame to waste it.