As the U.S. and China compete for supremacy in artificial intelligence, American students have fallen behind their Chinese counterparts in academic achievement amid weakening basic skills and excessive reliance on AI.
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial published on the 14th titled "Chinese Students Are Crushing American Kids," cited results from the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and warned of declining competitiveness in the U.S. education system.
In PISA 2025, students in China's Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions scored 612 in math, 597 in science and 527 in reading, ranking first in math and science. The U.S. scored 463, 502 and 490, respectively, with the math gap reaching 149 points. U.S. media noted that while the Chinese figures represent four regions with high economic and education levels rather than a national average, they still surpass U.S. results overall. The Journal said the ultimate gap in math ability between the U.S. and China amounts to more than seven years, adding that American schools are not producing enough students with advanced engineering and math skills.
China itself is touting the high-caliber talent drawn from its vast population as a competitive edge in the AI industry. According to Sina Finance on the 15th, Guo Ping, chairman of Huawei's supervisory board and a former chairman of the company, told new employees that while China is weaker than the U.S. in computing power, it has strengths in data utilization and industrial applications and is not lagging behind the U.S. in terms of talent.
At U.S. universities, meanwhile, warnings are emerging that AI is weakening students' thinking abilities. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's committee on AI use said in a recent report that generative AI is significantly changing university culture, diagnosing a phenomenon of "cognitive surrender" in which students facing difficult problems turn to AI for answers instead of thinking and researching on their own.
MIT noted that isolation could deepen as students rely on AI chatbots rather than visiting professors or working through problems with classmates. The committee also raised concerns about an "illusion of learning," in which students believe they have studied because they obtained answers instantly, even though they have not fully understood the material. In research MIT released last year, people who used chatbots as writing aids had difficulty recalling what they had written just minutes after completing an essay.
