Commentary
Following Chairman Mao’s lead, Chinese propaganda often referred to America as a Paper Tiger back in the day, implying a lack of substance behind a strong facade.
Although the term hasn’t found much use recently, there’s no lack of apt applications vying for attention. One, ironically, concerns China’s position as the highest-scoring participant in the most recent PISA tests (2018) of international academic performance among 15 year olds. According to PISA, China (BSJZ)—more on that acronym in a moment—dominated the results, with stellar scores in reading, math, and science.
Somewhat strangely, Hong Kong (China) and Macao (China) also appear in the list of top-scoring participants. One country with three different national school systems? This is more than odd as the schools in Macao and Hong Kong were operating independently long before they were absorbed by China into “special administrative regions.”…