The Chinese can't understand why we'd waste £80 billion on a
broken education system – Telegraph Blogs  Thursday 13 March
2014 | Blog Feed | All feeds  Katharine Birbalsingh    The
Chinese educations system is far from broken (Photo: Alamy)
China has leapfrogged Japan to become the world's second-largest
economy, a title Japan has held since 1968. This means that
China remains on target to take the number one slot from the US
between 2020 and 2030. Twice I have visited China and seen
inside her schools, spoken to her children and got a real sense
of her beating heart. Both times, I was struck by the fact that
the two Chinese characters that spell out the word ‘China’, mean
‘middle’ and ‘country’ on their own.  In other words, China,
being the ‘middle country’, is for the Chinese the centre of the
world. Speak to any Chinese child, and you understand how that
sentiment is rooted deeply within. Children at one school gave
me hundreds of cards to say hello, and often they would end
their note, not with their n