Ah...but I’ll bet the USA had to include a diverse population with a strict statistical quota of all groups, including one-armed Hotentots, whereas the Asians were all Asian. If our Asians competed against their Asians, we would rank higher.
The Chinese results were hand picked from a Shanghai school. I would be willing to bet that rural results would have brought the average way down.
Of course the reverse is true in the US. If you throw out the results from the lowest 20-30 failing urban school districts, the marks go way up.
This is no revelation. The urban US school districts are absolute cesspools run by cleptocrats.