C++ is higher-level than Java, in that it has a more flexible type system and can make abstractions that Java cannot. On the other hand, Java has garbage collection.

The truth is, Java sucks, horribly. Java is pretty much as crappy as a language can be. But it has garbage collection, which makes it better than C++, but much worse than pretty much every other language. Scala, a language that compiles to the JVM, is indisputably better than Java.