Not too surprised here, expected Asian countries towards the top
I have a theory it is language related.
Western countries use alphabets, while Asian countries use ideograms.
What studies conducted for other purposes have shown is that ideograms require you to use both hemispheres of the brain to analyze them, while alphabets only require one hemisphere of the brain.
I'm not suggesting the US abandon the Western Alphabet in favor of Sumerian pictographs, Akkadian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs or Asian ideograms, although perhaps we should, I'm just saying it might help to stimulate both hemispheres of a child's brain during prime-time language wiring.
Written between October 1922 and March 1923, the diaries see the scientist musing on his travels, science, philosophy and art. In China, the man who famously once described racism as “a disease of white people” describes the “industrious, filthy, obtuse people” he observes. He notes how the “Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.” After earlier writing of the “abundance of offspring” and the “fecundity” of the Chinese, he goes on to say: “It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”
Exactamundo.IQ and education are not the same thing. Not sure I really get that ranking nor do I understand the consistency of the input data.