@shortstories @Zeb @sardonicsmileI believe this as well, having lived in Japan (not in China) but I have seen what a far eastern society is like, I am very confident that the numbers are fake, for two reasons, the first is that older IQ estimates were made indirectly based on things like industrial development, rule-following, etc. which correlate very imperfectly with general intelligence, basically very bad estimates based on bad data, reason number two, far east societies care about projecting an image of being better than they are above all else and they have no moral qualms with falsifying information, truth-seeking is not their priority at all.
I think if you look at it with a critical look, it is obvious that societies where most people are older, coming from an era of poverty, most are farmers or descendents of farmers, many old people are very short because they didnt have good nutrition growing up, etc.
It is impossible that they would have an average IQ in the three digits, it cannot be.
Also my personal experience is that they are not more intelligent than the average European, and most European countries are somewhere in the 90s range.
I am interjecting because I very much agree with your post, but I haven't read the whole thread.