ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a review of the basis of the Chinese culture, including its Confucian heritage, in relation to the development and formulation of the concept of intelligence, creativity, and giftedness. It begins with the development of Chinese conceptions of intelligence and creativity because of their importance in the conception of Chinese giftedness. However, giftedness is much more than intelligence and creativity; hence, the chapter provides a full description of giftedness. It is noted that different languages facilitate different forms of thinking, and the Chinese language and mathematics abilities are useful in the development of giftedness. Regarding cognitive learning, Asian children who use symbolic language outperform their peers who use alphabetic language in cognitive representation and understanding of place value. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relationship between Chinese and Confucian-heritage culture and the inhibition of Chinese creativity, together with the implications of Chinese education of gifted children in a global context.
