High performance in math competitions is simply a result of a lot of training. There are only so many different kinds of problems and only so many different techniques that can be employed to solve such problems (the kind that come out in olympiads, etc). I'm not saying there's no creativity in math (absolutely, there is) but coming up with a new theorem is very different from simply knowing which theorem to apply where.

I didn't really say critical thought and creativity are the same thing but yeah, I shouldn't have lumped them together. From my experience, critical thought is much more common here than creativity but even that is not applied to anything outside quantitative subjects, such as politics or philosophy.

P.S. There are many creative, smart people here but they are creative because they are creative not because of the school system. What happens to these people later in life? Why don't they found companies? I suspect the answer here is because of the Singaporean mentality where entrepreneurship isn't valued as much as a stable job. But even more that, it's because these people are often given scholarships to study overseas. These scholarships have bonds where you have to work for the company (in most cases, the government) for 5/6 years. By the time they get out of their bond, there are already ~30 or older, have a family and can't bothered to switch/start companies.