I suppose I was hoping it didn't have to be academic. I might well have been thinking something closer to consultancy. If it had to be an actual observational study and it had to be ESL/EFL, my observation would be....
"*cough*, is this thing on.... hm well, Chinese, or ok, Chinese students, um, in the humanities... aw shit, Chinese, all Chinese, as a matter of education and culture, no wait, um....
Chinese lack independent control of analysis.
They can think just fine, they recognise knowledge, they may have trouble believing that independent standards exist but they'll acknowledge stuff that gets written in textbooks, and they can use it in situations where warranted, but if you want anybody to use principles to identify the working parts of that circumstance, situation or idea, then you're out of luck and you'll have to be satisfied with severely weakened moral determinations instead, though those determinations are often irrelevant and sound a lot more like general and/or received knowledge than they do relevant judgment.
And by the way, this significantly limits their ability to function in a foreign language English."
What people typically call Chinese lack of creativity.