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The story
An image apparently showing an 18-year-old Chinese visitor to Japan posting that a University of Tokyo (Todai) mock exam was “way too easy” was shared on the 5ch board “Nandemo Jikkyo G,” sparking a wave of discussion. In the thread, some posters shared firsthand accounts backing up the high academic level of China’s top students, while others pointed out that a mock-exam ranking alone only reflects strength in a few particular subjects. The debate spread to cover the gap between Tsinghua/Peking University and the University of Tokyo in the THE World University Rankings 2026, the cutoff line for making Japan’s Math Olympiad team, and the difference in Nobel Prize counts — with some even questioning Japan’s exam culture itself, saying it “puts the Todai entrance exam on too much of a pedestal.”
What people said
I was in one of the top departments at Todai too, but the Chinese exchange student in our lab was an absolute monster.
Kind of like how Japan's WBC players get intimidated just looking at Shohei Ohtani.
Basic point here — doesn't matter if it's China, South Korea, North Korea, Mongolia, or Bhutan.
If you're genuinely that country's top talent, the entrance exam for Todai or Stanford is going to be easy.
Even setting aside the Japanese-language section, he's nowhere near Japan's top tier.
He's just on the level of one of the roughly 3,000 people who get into Todai every year.
Smart Chinese people are basically what Japanese people hate most.
And they're even passing legal reforms that throw away the chance to secure overseas talent.
Even if they eventually go back to their home country, just having those connections would be valuable.
Ranking 24th in math means he's nowhere close to making Japan's Math Olympiad team — not even a near miss.
Then again, Japan's own math ranking is already behind North Korea's, lol.
And the point is, even Japan is only ranked 24th.
No matter how smart you are or how much money you make, your body isn't even fully your own.
One order from the state and it can all be taken away — a sad way to live.
That's some serious sour grapes…
Well, it's a tough system to live under, but they're the ones who have to change it themselves.
And back when the economy was good and there wasn't this much of a crackdown on leaving the country, the Chinese people were happily enjoying the sweet fruits of the Communist Party's generous policies too.
Re: #68
It's basically a free economy at this point.
Sure, you can't buy land in your own country,
but they own land in Japan.
World University Rankings 2026
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/latest/world-ranking
#12 Tsinghua University (China)
#13 Peking University (China)
#26 University of Tokyo (Japan)
#33 University of Hong Kong (China)
#36 Fudan University (China)
#39 Zhejiang University (China)
#40 Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China)
#41 Chinese University of Hong Kong (China)
#61 Kyoto University (Japan)
#103 Tohoku University (Japan)
#151 Osaka University (Japan)
With a gap like that, there's basically no benefit left for China's super-elite to come study in Japan.
A Tsinghua student I met was ridiculously smart.
Lost to him easily even in my own specialty.
We happened to meet online and started out just discussing technical stuff normally, but he completely outclassed me. I wondered who this guy even was, checked his GitHub profile, and it turned out he was from Tsinghua.
What about Seoul National University?
Where does the top school of South Korea — the world's most brutal exam-hell country — rank?
Meanwhile they're bad at analyzing individual traits and putting people in the right role for their strengths.
Maybe it's some influence from rice-farming culture?
Isn't that most obvious with Japanese people? University is just a stepping stone, yet they obsess over it endlessly.
Japanese people really do put entrance exams on too much of a pedestal — it's ultimately just the ability to solve high-school-level problems.
Instead of figuring out which field someone has a special talent in and how to make use of it, everyone gets hung up on overall-score rankings. I don't get it.
Isn't that basically like whaling in a mobile gacha game?
And Japan is fully dependent on that country, lol.
Well, some of that comes down to accumulated history too. If censorship eases and democratization progresses, there's a good chance China overtakes Japan within 50 years.
It takes around 30 years for an invention to be put into practical use and get recognized.
He'd finish the Math II/B section of the Center Test in under 30 minutes and solve quadratic function problems without even drawing the graph.
He had about half his time left over on English, chemistry, and physics too.
This guy isn't even top-tier though.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The “Todai mock exam” behind this story is a nationwide practice exam run by university prep schools, widely used as a benchmark for university entrance-exam difficulty. The World University Rankings (THE) cited in the thread use their own evaluation criteria, factoring in things like research citation counts and international outlook — the fact that Tsinghua and Peking University rank above the University of Tokyo is specific to this particular index, and rankings from other bodies like QS or ARWU can place the schools differently. On other measures, such as Nobel Prize counts, Japan comes out ahead, so which university comes out “on top” depends heavily on which yardstick you use. The thread’s discussion expanded from one person’s personal experience into a comparison of entire national education levels, but since mock-exam results depend heavily on a given test-taker’s strong subjects and the exam’s scope, it’s difficult to draw conclusions about an entire education system from a single case.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Sad News] Chinese Visitor (18): “Came to Japan and took a Todai mock exam, way too easy lol, Japan needs to study harder lol”.”
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