Children in China are prodded to wean much earlier than children in the West. They are weaned off nappies around 18 months of age (a year earlier than the West) and sent to kindergartens at the age of 2 (also a year earlier). This pattern is repeated throughout the school years; parents make huge efforts to educate their children and put commensurate pressure on them to achieve good scores so that they can get admitted to a good university.

It is as if parents project their own ambitions on their children, expecting them to be better educated and better off financially than themselves - an expectation made more emphatic by the value of a certificate in finding a good job.

There is hardly any appreciation of life's experiences in the job market. Job advertisements are specific about academic achievements and work experience, which force students to focus on getting high scores and parents to offer all sorts of incentives and put disciplinary pressure on their children to perform brilliantly in exams.

Some middle schools double as boarding schools, and many others turn into boarding schools during the last semester leading to exams, putting students on a regimental study schedule. Everything, including the amount of reading and exercise from 6 am to 10 pm, is scheduled. Teenagers find such study schedules exhausting.

In the West, children are given more space to develop their own interests and express themselves. They develop at their own pace. Life's experiences and extra-curricular activities are considered an integral part of a child's educational and personal development.

The emphasis in the West is on the child as a person with its own persona; the emphasis in China is on the child as an achiever. The reasons are partly cultural. Many Chinese children are still expected to take care of their parents after getting a job, and people in China are expected to be of service to the family and perform a social role. People in the West are more individualistic, putting individual gratification and goals as something separate from society.