The observed phenomenon here is broadly true, but the conclusion—that being “smart” mainly comes from innate talent and inheritance, and that studying has little to do with it—is the result of several statistical illusions stacking on top of each other.
The unseen denominator
At a dinner party, you encounter the subset of people who survived among the same group. They share characteristics such as having only finished primary school, being bold enough to take risks, and being able to borrow funds from people back home. But those who ran away, those brought down by chains of guarantees, those who got in, and those who gambled away their money will never appear at your table.
The credit-crash wave of informal lending in Wenzhou in 2011, and later the P2P and guarantee-industry circles—what fell was the other half of this same group. Using the same set of traits can explain both success and failure, which shows that these traits themselves are not the explanatory variables.
A generational effect mistaken for an ability issue
Most of these bosses were born in the 1950s to 1970s. Back then, college entrance exam admission rates were in the single digits. Universities were not a filter at all. Among the smartest people of that generation, most simply couldn’t afford to study. So “low-education bosses are smart” really means that in that era, education and intelligence were almost uncorrelated.
If you look at the post-1990s and post-2000s instead, the proportion of people who dropped out at middle school and built a business from scratch to reach the tens of millions has plummeted almost overnight. This isn’t because people got dumber—it’s because the arbitrage opportunities disappeared.
They profited from policy and system dividends
Information asymmetry, blurry policy gray zones, relationship-based resources, and the courage to bet—between 1980 and 2010, China priced these skills extremely high. The “getting along harmoniously” and “entertaining and giving gifts” you listed are precisely the core competitive advantages in such an environment.
This is a high-return skill bundle tied to a specific time and place; it is not a general sense in which “having a working brain” alone is enough.
The hardest counterevidence
Almost without exception, these bosses did everything they could to send their children to study, go abroad for education, and take public-service exams. If studying really had no use, their money would vote against itself. They all know better than anyone: the path they took is no longer available for the next generation.
If we talk about what is truly valid in this argument, there is actually only one thing—education is not equal to ability, and the amount of schooling cannot directly be translated into “smart.” But moving from that to the claim that “smartness mainly comes from innate talent and inheritance” crosses a very deep bridge in between.
The unseen denominator
At a dinner party, you encounter the subset of people who survived among the same group. They share characteristics such as having only finished primary school, being bold enough to take risks, and being able to borrow funds from people back home. But those who ran away, those brought down by chains of guarantees, those who got in, and those who gambled away their money will never appear at your table.
The credit-crash wave of informal lending in Wenzhou in 2011, and later the P2P and guarantee-industry circles—what fell was the other half of this same group. Using the same set of traits can explain both success and failure, which shows that these traits themselves are not the explanatory variables.
A generational effect mistaken for an ability issue
Most of these bosses were born in the 1950s to 1970s. Back then, college entrance exam admission rates were in the single digits. Universities were not a filter at all. Among the smartest people of that generation, most simply couldn’t afford to study. So “low-education bosses are smart” really means that in that era, education and intelligence were almost uncorrelated.
If you look at the post-1990s and post-2000s instead, the proportion of people who dropped out at middle school and built a business from scratch to reach the tens of millions has plummeted almost overnight. This isn’t because people got dumber—it’s because the arbitrage opportunities disappeared.
They profited from policy and system dividends
Information asymmetry, blurry policy gray zones, relationship-based resources, and the courage to bet—between 1980 and 2010, China priced these skills extremely high. The “getting along harmoniously” and “entertaining and giving gifts” you listed are precisely the core competitive advantages in such an environment.
This is a high-return skill bundle tied to a specific time and place; it is not a general sense in which “having a working brain” alone is enough.
The hardest counterevidence
Almost without exception, these bosses did everything they could to send their children to study, go abroad for education, and take public-service exams. If studying really had no use, their money would vote against itself. They all know better than anyone: the path they took is no longer available for the next generation.
If we talk about what is truly valid in this argument, there is actually only one thing—education is not equal to ability, and the amount of schooling cannot directly be translated into “smart.” But moving from that to the claim that “smartness mainly comes from innate talent and inheritance” crosses a very deep bridge in between.
