Uh, they are smarter and more disciplined. Read the Bell Curve.
It’s possible the teachers in Asia either are smarter or have a better understanding of math.
Many college students, even graduate students, these days do not even understand decimals. When given two decimals, 0.1 and 0.09 they cannot tell you which is smaller. Many were taught that “everything works backwards to the right of the decimal point.”
I hate to tell you, I know of one medical student who had zero understanding of decimals.