As an Asian, I would like to step in.
China as they have higher IQs and not to be rasict or anything many people from the Asian Continent such as Chinese people are amazing at math.
Chinese are typically good at Math because of the emphasis and focus on learning Math. This is probably because of the current situation of China, where they focus very greatly on Math and the sciences since these are all things that are guaranteed to make money. The greed for insane wealth drives this, and the availability of high paying jobs involving math and science puts more pressure for Asian children to do well in these subjects in school. I'm sure if there were many available and high paying jobs in the arts that Asian parents would pressure their children to do well in the arts too.
My opinion is that the national group 'Chinese' are kicking the shit out of us in that area. My speculation is that it has to do with how their language is ordered and written and so on. If that is accurate then groups with similar language types would also do well in cryptography.
A reason for my speculation is that they use single characters to portray words, like creating an alphabet of words with tens of thousands of characters. In English, for example, you must 'know' tens of thousands of words to communicate, but to write you only need to know 26 written letters.
I don't think that the alphabet and memorization of words helps with understanding logic and cryptography. It would be more of the syntax and structure of the language. If anything, I would think that people who know Latin would be better cryptographers because Latin is a very precise language, with a very specific syntax and structure. It is logically built and the ordering of words in Latin can be very important. This aspect I feel would make good cryptographers.
Overall, I think that China probably is better at cryptography since they have a population trained very highly in math. Also, China has a larger population, so they can use more people to develop cryptography than other countries would.
Roughly 6 generations ago Germans were probably considered superior in subjects comparable to cryptography in this context. They got their asses handed to them.
In the 70s Japan was considered a phenomenal rising star. Superior at everything, an economy about to take off, etc. Now they are looking for a way to survive as a country.
The United States used to be full of theories about how it became superior. Was it because it was a melting pot? Because of a frontier mentality? Doesn't matter now because it is near death.
So okay, you say that if the Chinese needed to be 'superior' in the arts they would snap their fingers and do it. I'll watch from a distance.
Western means Europe and North America, I`m from Europe.
"Western" usually means the American continent - both North and South (yes, there is a South America!).
There is north/south and east/west.
A thousand years ago the Americas, north and south, were 'the east'.
Today 'the south' is the poor countries and 'the north' is China, Russia, the U.S. etc.
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