June Huh
Huh?
I don't buy that. You have to be smart to consistently show up as winners in all those competitions. Look at the Putnam competition. Chinese students at MIT ruled it last year. They do get hired at Princeton/MIT/Harvard, so they are apparently good enough for them. What about Chinese Americans? They make up a huge proportion of American IMO winners.
Just as I think that French mathematicians are unjustly overrepresented as Fields medalists, I do think that Chinese mathematicians are unjustly underrepresented. Even if you play the creativity card, enough "mere" problem solvers have gotten it.
Fields Medalists are just a sample of a larger group of mathematicians who are of a similar caliber.
There many Chinese mathematicians who did Fields-caliber work but never got the medal (but you could say that about any group of mathematicians). Just look at the faculty at top math departments and you will see plenty of Chinese and Chinese-origin mathematicians.
This notion that they are not creative is ridiculous.
The stereotype of Chinese having no creativity is not without some level of truth. Just look at economics. Lots of Chinese grad students can pass qualifying exams and other filters that sift out non-savant level iq but almost none writing interesting research compared to French and Indian students