The stereotype that Asians, particularly Chinese people, are good at maths is so pervasive that one-time Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang made it a central feature of his campaign. “The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian guy who likes math,” he frequently told rally-goers.

Students and teachers in Asia feel there is some truth in the stereotype. “I think at math competitions, then it’s true,” says Chu Cheuk-hei, a 15-year-old student in Hong Kong who competes in international maths competitions.

“Chinese or Asian students normally do perform better than other students.”

Not every Chinese student is good at maths, cautions Alex Dutton, a physics and maths tutor in Hong Kong, “but in general, all my Chinese students are just the next level above all the non-Chinese.”

Students from mainland China are the best in the world, survey finds

Frederick Leung, a maths education professor at the University of Hong Kong, has been studying this subject for the past two and a half decades.

Every four years, he administers a maths test for students aged 10 to 14 in over 60 countries and regions. He publishes the rankings in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.

Consistently in the top five are Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Mainland China does not participate in the study.

Leung believes one of the reasons why students from those places consistently outperform others is their shared Confucian culture, which values hard work and merit.

“In this old Confucian culture, there’s this stress on education,” Leung says. “In London, when I interview parents and ask them, ‘Oh, your child is not doing very well in mathematics. Why do you think this is the case?,’ they say, ‘Oh, he’s not very good in mathematics. No, I was not good at mathematics myself, you know. But he’s very good in basketball or music or art.’

“In Beijing, the same question to parents. ‘Oh, he’s lazy.’ So it’s a big contrast to Western parents,” Leung says. “They attribute more success and failure of their child, especially in mathematics, to innate ability.”

A pillar of China’s meritocratic system is the national examinations, which today are still used to determine university admissions and placement in government jobs.

One of the subjects is, of course, maths.

National exams have their origins in the seventh century during the Sui Dynasty, when the court required people to pass exams on classic Confucian texts, law, and politics.

It was one way to move up the social ladder and land a prestigious government job. Exams fueled the idea that studying hard could improve one’s lot.

“So through generations, we have this very deep trust in examination,” Leung says.

Today, the obsession with tests has fueled the growth of private education industries including tutoring and cram schools.

In China, more than 90 per cent of parents pay for cram school, making it a US$383 billion industry in 2019.

Is it easier to learn maths in certain languages? Some studies suggest yes.

“The digit system is very simple in Chinese,” Leung says, “making at least arithmetic very easy to learn.”

Researchers of early childhood education have found that the way a language describes numbers can affect how quickly children do sums.

Take the number 11, for example. Languages such as English, French, and Spanish have a unique word for it — eleven, onze and once.

But in Chinese, the number is said as “10” and “one.” And the digits are monosyllabic, making them easier to commit to memory.

The same number system is used in Arabic, Korean and Japanese.

One of the benefits of this system, Leung says, is that maths can be taught with mnemonic devices, such as songs.

“When I was young — I’m Cantonese — we didn’t have a times table,” he says. “We had a song, the Nine Factors Song .”

These mnemonic devices make it easier to commit multiplication tables to memory, which build the basis for higher-level mathematics.