Opinion | The classic Chinese parenting playbook won’t survive the AI age - South China Morning Post

Lu HuijingLu Huijing is an associate professor of developmental psychology at the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong Published: 5:30am, 15 Sep 2026Like many Hong Kong parents, Ms Ng spends her weekend shuttling her eight-year-old son from one tutoring class to another across the city, hoping to strengthen his academic performance. Across Chinese communities worldwide, parents travel the same journey, investing time, money and energy.

The reasons for this may not be what you think.

Psychologist David Geary distinguished between two classes of cognitive ability. Biologically primary abilities such as speaking, counting and basic social understanding develop in all human children with minimal formal instruction. Biologically secondary abilities such as reading, writing and formal mathematics require sustained learning and only develop in specific cultural contexts.