this part is false. Ill give you the whole cultural thing and why the media seems to use that for them, but not us. pretty fukked up.
but innovation is def superior in the west than the east. an american can wing a lot of things and come up with many different NEW guidelines from scratch.
asians study until the wee mornings, but theyre memorizing. its a memory culture (its ingrained even in their writing, memorizing characters from childhood, rather than 26 letters and puzzling them). ask the same student a year later, its forgotten, however the american knows the material. he may get some wrong, but he knows the basis. strip guidelines and formula from asians and its like chickens with their heads cut off. standing out is praised in the west, but in the east, its avoided.
this is a huge problem in asia that even they themselves are trying to fix.
asians in america get a lot of technical jobs, but notice they never get the decision making jobs, like VPs etc. There are more black VPs and CEOs than asians
in america, even percentage wise.
In Asia they have a fukk load, but those companies are carbon copies of western companies...like youku, baidu, etc.
its actually a common frustration living in the east. its like I can order a burger and get it super fast, but god forbid I decide to customize it, all of a sudden its like a CPU crashing.

in america every other order is customized, and we like it that way. we like thinking of new ways to do things. btw. just an analogy, havent had a good burger in awhile and decided to use that.