What China has not realized, if it truly wants to go to the next level, is that numbers are not enough. You must reward innovation, and reward scholarly work.
The best people have left and the old people have retired, and commercialization has taken hold.
I never expected to go to college. Nobody in my high school went to college. We had half-pound rations of meat and of cooking oil. Matches were rationed. Toilet paper was rationed.