George Rebane

[This post appears in the 9jul25 edition of The Union’s op-ed pages, retitled with the atrocious and confusing word salad ‘US political factions push socialism to achieve Chinese Communist Party levels of control?’ (Note the question mark.)  The newspaper also refused to include the accompanying figure which makes clear to the layman an otherwise obtuse discussion of population distribution bell curves.  In the 20 years I have been publishing in The Union as contributor and regular columnist, I’ve never had my title changed nor any included figure omitted.  To add insult to injury, I usually append my PhD in the signature block only under articles with some technical content – certain other authors always append and have their PhD appellations included.   For reasons unknown, for this article my PhD was stripped, another first.  gjr]

Led by states like California, New York, and Illinois, America’s cognitive decline now has a fifty-year history as documented by government reports on student test scores, adult numeracy, and population literacy in general (e.g. from the National Center for Educational Statistics).  Our public education system, already on the rocks, is now in an epochal turmoil with the advent of AI-based writing and thinking tools for students.  The impact of AI on systemic unemployment is also beginning to make itself felt as white-collar jobs ranging from manufacturing through middle management to computer programmers are being eliminated by the thousands.  Job growth in our hospitality industry sustains our current 4.2% unemployment rate – for now.  But even there the nation’s increasing minimum wages are impelling the adoption of AI to reduce the expensive labor headcount.

The great benefactor of our degradation is Communist China – our geo-strategic enemy and dedicated adversary in global commerce.  Their hundred-year plan – now at the half-way point – calls for them to replace the United States as the world’s military and economic hegemon.  In the process they are gaining on us in the important categories ranging from overall GDP, manufacturing, military build-up, and technology development, especially in AI.

Almost all of this can be explained by our two countries’ populations, their cultural make-up, and cognitive capabilities.  China is culturally cohesive; their population is over 85% ethnically Han.  America is a proudly unassimilated hodgepodge of cultures.  (Recall the German and other EU countries’ experience – “Multi-kulti does not work.”)  In the cognitive arena, Chinese are smarter than we are.  According to international agencies that measure such metrics, Americans’ average IQ is 98 compared to the Chinese average of 108.  Cognitive tests of all kinds (including standardized IQ) are designed so that the scores of a broad population of test takers scale to an average of 100 with a standard deviation of 15.  This results in the familiar bell curve-shaped population distributions.  Various population cohorts will, of course, vary from this standard as noted above for the US and China.

The nearby figure – based on data from government sources and academia, e.g. social scientists like Charles Murray (2021) – illustrates this variation graphically while illuminating a disturbing difference between our two countries.  There we see the two bell curves appropriately placed on the cognitive IQ scale.  The areas under the bell curves are proportional to the countries’ populations.  The average or mean IQ values for each population are shown as dotted lines at 98 and 108.

(Consider a specific stat that also highlights the meritocracy v equity based Chinese educational system which pumps out 3.57M STEM graduates annually compared to America’s 820K output.  “China produces roughly 6 times more STEM graduates annually than the U.S.”)

To get a comparative measure of the populations, consider a broad category of jobs that require workers of above average intellect, say, IQs above 120 as shown – these may include professions such as medicine, science, engineering, and institutional management.  As presented in the figure, China’s current population of over 1.4 billion includes almost 300M citizens with IQs above 120, while the similar US cohort numbers about 25M out of a population of almost 350M.  China has over 12 times as many such smart people as do we.

So why haven’t they eaten our lunch yet on the world stage?  The historically obvious reason is simple – the Chinese live under the repressive and stifling dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  It is that form of central control by collectivist governance that is keeping the Chinese from dominating us in commerce, science, and technology, areas in which they already have and continue to demonstrate their hobbled prowess.

Meantime in the US there is a large political faction embracing socialism that has been doing its best to achieve similar collectivist control of our population, all in the name of social justice beginning with perverse definitions and applications of diversity, equity, and inclusion.  So it is clear that our current diminishing advantage over the cynically named People’s Republic of China is entirely due to our benefactors (friends?) in the CCP.  To argue otherwise would be an appeal to blatant racism that maligns the ethnic population of China and its Han culture.