So this is what really unsettles me. Not that China graduates more engineers every year than we have entirely employed in the US, but rather, that these individuals are not about delegating work, but actually doing it. Whereas the western credo is to get someone else to do the work (or in the words of PAtton, to get some one else to die for his country), I get the feeling that China will get robots and AI to do the work. I am reminded of the joke about Chinese factories having only 1 security guard and 1 dog. The guard is there to feed the dog.
Sadly, same can't be said about India (infrastructure/food security lags China).
Even if food security holds back 10% of Indians (which would still be a huge tragedy), that would still leave the other 90% for the 'onslaught'. 10% is just a made up number. But even with 50% you'd get an 'onslaught'.
So if we are seeing less than that, it's probably down to other factors.
I'm not so sure about that: https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2026/ suggests peak high school in china was years ago.
So at least in theory there's still lots of room to increase high school enrollment, though I doubt this would lead to noticeably more geniuses. The testing system is pretty good at sorting the best students into good schools, I think.
It's bad enough they passed some legislation a few years ago[1], but the damage has in many senses already been done. And it's unclear how effective the changes will be. So it's entirely possible those 3 million missing high schoolers never existed.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-top-legislative-b...
Some statistics reported in China are unreliable because the person doing the reporting also has their performance evaluated by the numbers they report and there are few external checks on validity, but I don't think that's the case for student numbers in particular.
Also, it seems like you're the same 'jldugger who cited Chinese population statistics upthread, but when somebody else does it, they're suddenly unreliable???