“American teenage girls do look much older - and act older, in a social sense - than their equivalents in Asia. I don’t know how this can be documented, but thats what I saw.”
So - why do american chinese gymnasts not look 10 when they are 16?
Why do chinese gymnasts from the past appear older at 16 than girls in the last 2 olympics?
Do asians retain baby teeth at 16?
American Chinese gymnasts -
- Come from a very tiny population pool, less than 20 million, even counting pro-rated proportion of adoptees. Chinas base pool is over 50 times larger.
- Come from an even smaller pool of people who volunteer their children for this sport. The Chinese state system multiplies that pool size by many times, how many its impossible to jusdge, but combined with the population base it must be a factor of hundreds.
- American Chinese kids are raised under at least partially American cultural constraints. Their parents are very unlikely to completely abdicate their responsibilities to the coaches and the state. Deliberate malnutrition and retarded development are much less likely to edge towards extremes.
The Chinese state, to put it bluntly, is far more capable of finding freaks of nature and molding them for a specific purpose.
This is not to say the Chinese aren’t cheating. They are perfectly capable of doing that and certainly will if given a low-risk opportunity.