in the past, many chinese have a relatively rich international knowledge compared with people of other countries, especially americans.
last night i had a conversation as below:
me: do you know who is rice?
her: the new secretary of state of the US?
me: yes. and colin powell?
her: easy, the guy who governs california, he was a former movie star, i think.
me: i bet you don't know dick cheney.
her: certainly i know, he is the russian defense minister!
with more and more business ties with the outside world, chinese's knowledge of foreign countries go down a lot in recent years, younger generations are even ignorant of china's neighbours like korea and japan, a friend of mine who just visited south korea said that she'd better spend the vacation doing some shopping in shanghai instead of going to korea because she knows nothing about that country.