Exactly like the Chinese culture. Creativity is exceedingly rare in their engineering graduates... but since their culture sees nothing wrong with "borrowing", it isn't much of a problem, as long as someone else is creative enough.
(Plagiarism is a very big problem with Chinese students.)
Creativity often spurs competition and we cannot have competition because minorities are most often disadvantaged in academic areas.
I worked at a site in Indonesia. The American working there said that the Indonesian engineers could recite equations at the drop of a hat. They couldn’t figure out a solution to a real-life problem if their lives depended on it. He called them “Automatons”.
Seems like Barry was impressed with his Asian school years.