"It is impossible to reason with them because they do not understand larger issues as we understand in China," the Ch'ing Emperor K'ang-hsi declared of Westerners. "Their remarks are often incredible and ridiculous."

110.

Though K'ang-hsi could little have guessed it, his ideas were ahead of his time. Two hundred and eight years later, the notion of Chinese intellectual superiority is thriving. These days, the leading proponents are not Chinese chauvinists but Western scholars. According to several statistical measures of intelligence, people of Asian and especially Chinese descent consistently outscore other racial and ethnic groups. Authors Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein report in their 1994 book, The Bell Curve, that on standardized IQ tests Japanese score 103 on average, while Americans come in at 101 to 102--and Chinese at

The basic facts are clear enough. Over many years of study, researchers have found that the pattern of test results remains largely the same. No matter how the numbers are sorted, matched and crunched, there is a persistent divergence between the figures for Chinese and other ethnic groups. What's debatable is the meaning of these findings. Are the differences really genetic? Are they cultural--perhaps reflecting the Confucian respect for learning or those generations of mandarins perfecting their test-taking skills? Are, in fact, some races fundamentally smarter than others?

As an academic question, the heritability of IQ is complex and taxing. Much ink has been spilled on issues of statistical interpretation, the proper selection of study groups and the interpretation of findings. Powerful arguments suggest that IQ is largely a genetic legacy; equally powerful arguments suggest the reverse. Oddly, none of them seems to have had the slightest impact on what people believe to be true.

Earlier this year, after a round of tests confirmed the discrepancy yet again, a Hong Kong newspaper asked a local grandmother what she thought of the news. She expressed concern for her daughter's newborn child, whose father is American. "I believe the findings are true," she said, "and I worry that the interracial marriage will lower the IQ of my grandson."

But is it true? Do higher IQ scores mean that Chinese are smarter than the rest of us? Probably not, at least in any meaningful sense. Human intelligence is too vast and subtle a phenomenon to be reduced to a trio of digits. It's even hard to say what we mean by smart. The world is full of brilliant poets who can't balance a checkbook, and genius physicists incapable of driving a manual-shift car. Understanding social cues, creating works of art and spawning inventions are all crucial mental tasks that bear little relationship to how well a person can fill in a printed test form.

It's worth remembering too that IQ isn't quite the same thing as intelligence. As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in his 1983 book, The Mismeasure of Man, the mere fact that we can consistently measure something--in this case, IQ--doesn't mean that thing has any particular significance or corresponds to any intuitive, man-on-the-street concept. By way of analogy, if we measured everybody's height and divided it by his or her weight, we could come up with a heaviness quotient--an "HQ." After years of research, we might find that Europeans have a higher average HQ than Chinese. But would that mean Europeans are slimmer than Chinese, get more exercise or are more robust in some vague, undefined way? Without additional information, we couldn't tell. Likewise, a person's measured IQ may relate only indirectly to a layman's notion of being smart.

More fundamentally, the debate over race and IQ misses the real point of human intelligence. At the end of the day, intelligence is about thinking, and groups don't think. People do. Even the most impressive cerebral capability is useless if it isn't consciously put to good use. Every one of us should feel it necessary--and possible--to learn more, think more and reason more clearly. There's no sense being lulled into complacency because our group has better test averages, or lapsing into despair because our compatriots score lower.

As the roster of Nobel prizewinners shows, genius isn't limited to a single racial or ethnic group. On the contrary, this is an age of uncommonly universal productivity, in which the spread of education, affluence and the means to communicate has released untapped mental powers in every corner of the planet. Triumphs of scientific ingenuity and artistic creativity are sprouting everywhere. In this mental cornucopia, more people have the opportunity to do the things smart people do-learn, think, create-than ever before.

Whatever our personal IQ may be, and wherever we may have happened to obtain it, our choice in the end is all the same--to let our brains languish or to stretch them to new possibilities. Some traits may be racial, but our minds are our own. On that score we all have to stand alone.