In China, both Master & Ph.D are called graduate student. We have not clear distinction between them. For example, in my university, 10% undergraduate students go to USA directly; 50% pursue Master degree then go to USA; the next 30% will be Ph.D, but they will deliberately get a very low score on some courses such as Philosophy, Socialism Economics, then they can transfer to Master, then go to USA. That's a very ridiculous phenomena in China.

But in North America, Master is not quite different from Bachelor. You just need take more courses, even thesis is unnecessay. But the criteria of Ph.D is very strict. Ph.D. really needs new point of view to the world.