Well in Chinese cooking we use a wide variety actually. Typically speaking...
Medium or Long Grain Rice
Sweet Rice or Glutinous Rice
- Sticky Rice (You commonly see this at Dim Sum places in the sticky rice dishes wrapped in lotus leaves, among other places.)
There are others of course, but those are the common ones you'll find since you were asking about Chinese Takeout. The shorter the grain, the more "sticky" it will be. However, that doesn't mean that long grain rice should come out grainy either. I suppose different restaurants will do it differently, around here they generally use long grain rice for "white rice". This is how my mother taught me to make rice:
- Wash Rice a few times till there isn't any more murkiness.
- Add water till it reaches your first knuckle on your pointer finger when the tip is just barely touching the rice (should generally work for any amount of rice).
- Bring to boil, turn to simmer (covered). Check back in 10 to 15 minutes If the water is mostly gone, and it isn't at the texture you like, you can always add a bit more water.
- Let it sit for a few minutes after the heat is off.
In China, you'll find all different grains. I've seen both short and long grains, and have seen plain white, long grain rice served as well.
Near as I can tell, it's probably the local economics. It seems to me that the cost is different per "component" but would probably balance out in the end.
Chinese food, generally speaking, relies more on fresh vegetables (carrots, peas, bean-sprouts, broccoli etc.) and meat. This means that the storage costs and spoilage costs are higher relative to Indian food, which is higher in legumes and beans that are much easier and cheaper to store, and last forever when dry.
On the other hand, Chinese is generally quicker to prepare (think stir fry, though not only), which means less time on the fire, and less man-power used. Indian food usually requires more cooking time, which may mean that the restaurant has a larger capital outlay for stove space.
Aside from that, in my experience at least, Indian is usually a register above Chinese for "comparable" places. The Indian equivalent of a Chinese place serving simple rice and 10-12 stir-fry dishes would be a simple Thali bar, but there aren't many of those, as us Westerners like to order several different meat/vegetable main dishes at a time, as opposed to a set menu.
Anyway, note that I haven't done any proper costing of these type of food preparation.
Best Answer
It's simple; Americanized Chinese food rarely contains cheese because Chinese food rarely contains cheese.
As many as 90% of Chinese people are, to some degree, lactose intolerant. Dairy is simply not a large part of Chinese food culture. Dairy is growing as a business in China. However, since dairy makes most Chinese sick, I imagine the dairy industry will be primarily an industry of exportation.
EDIT As I promised in comments, I did look for citations for that 90% figure. The figure is ubiquitous. It may in fact have more to do with societal evolution than anything innate in the genetics of the Chinese people, but the fact remains. Most Chinese people react poorly to dairy.
Neato Chart