China's Performance at the 2024 IMO

I click on enough math education and stories about math Olympiads that a story from the South China Morning Post came on my feed today.

"China lost its sixth consecutive International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) on Monday, trailing the US by two points, but young genius Shi Haojia once again achieved a perfect score in the world's premier high school maths competition."

Regarding the individual winner Shi Haojia who should be congratulated,

"At the age of 10, he won a gold medal in a national primary school maths competition. His gift for maths was discovered when he was in grade 5, and since then he has been trained for maths competitions. 

In 2021, Haojia was selected for the YAU Mathematical Sciences Leaders Programme at Tsinghua University, which recruits middle and high school students with outstanding potential from around the world and trains them from undergraduate to doctoral studies."

I want to call attention to the effort to look for, recruit, and nurture talent over the course of years. 

Regarding the overall Chinese effort in math Olympiads,

"Robotics scientist Geng Tao, who used to work at a British university and is now the founder of a start-up, said China's loss of first place this time was likely to be temporary. 

He said China had a large talent pool, and Chinese families tended to take such competitions more seriously. Geng said the Chinese government was also more willing to mobilise the country's resources to achieve certain goals - such as winning gold medals at the Olympics - which would also help the country maintain its lead in the mathematics race in the long run. According to Geng, students from China and India also showed more interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) than their US counterparts, who were more likely to major in subjects such as finance, law and medicine. China is a main source of STEM talent, producing a large number of scientists, engineers and technicians working in the US today."

I guess one could be offended by this, but it all just sounds pretty accurate to me. The only mild nuance I would add is that it probably isn't just China and India, and other countries in Asia and Eastern Europe seem to also emphasize math and STEM subjects more than in the US -- the US is a pretty low bar in this regard in my opinion.

Good thing we have so many lawyers!

That reminds me of that joke about the lawyer who sets up shop in a small town and realizes that there really aren't enough people to support his practice...so he tells another lawyer to set up shop down the street!

I'm here all night.