Are <i>all</i> Chinese businesses run by &quot;creative&quot; foreigners who &quot;understand the root of the problem&quot;? At some point in the hierarchy someone has to be making the meaningful decisions, they can&#x27;t all just be heads down technicians all the way to... where?<p>A culture of hierarchy and following orders from above is orthogonal to whether or not people understand the issue. You say &quot;they rarely ask why&quot; but that doesn&#x27;t mean they don&#x27;t <i>think</i> why.<p>I know in American business it&#x27;s common to agitate and question your superiors at all levels, but that doesn&#x27;t <i>necessarily</i> translate to better outcomes. For example, the American military doesn&#x27;t work that way (it works much more akin to Chinese businesses, really). And the American military is quite good.<p>edit: I say this as an MIT grad who has been mightily impressed by Tsinghua students. I still think MIT is better, of course, ;-) but it doesn&#x27;t surprise me that Tsinghua is at the top of the list this year.