Well, it sounds like you don't like their findings yet you don’t offer a single fact to disprove them. I have no first hand experience regarding China but I read all the time that their children work very hard:
As reported by a news briefing, Chinese students, on average, spend 2.82 hours per day on their schoolwork. This is triple the international average (
source). So, why is it then so hard for some to believe that the Chinese can succeed in research? Have you seen the number of patents the Chinese companies file these days? What about the stories I hear constantly about the Asian (and specifically Chinese) students excelling in US colleges? Are these all lies?
And speaking of misery...
The Global Happiness 2023 Report, released by multinational market research and consulting firm Ipsos ahead of the International Day of Happiness on March 20, showed that Chinese people are the happiest among the 32 countries and regions sampled, with 91 percent of Chinese respondents saying they are generally happy, 12 percent increase from a decade ago. Are you going to question Ipsos (a French company) too? Now, there are different types of surveys of this sort and in other surveys China did not rank as high, yet in those surveys too China has been improving their rating steadily. Perhaps instead of giving a quote you could give a few facts to support your position? Questioning the source is good. Not having any sources - not so good. Besides, if you really are questioning the source, you'd better have some grounds for that or it looks like you are questioning them solely because you don't like their findings and not because you know something that would let a reasonable person not to trust the source.
BTW, here is
information about the ASPI funding:
View attachment 1214
And here is the detailed list of the foreign government agencies that funded them (2021-22):
View attachment 1215
Very very suspect is not it? Now, go ahead and tell us why we should not trust ASPI (admittedly, personally I am skeptical of some of the US State Department funded projects but those are mostly NGOs used for propaganda purposes)
Also, whatever the Chinese call their ruling party, China and communism have nothing in common, comrade.