Winter 2013

Nation of Imitators

THE SOURCE: “Copycat China” by Yu Hua, in Prospect, Sept. 2012.

President Barack Obama has endorsed a Chinese knockoff cell phone. Or so a manufacturer named “Harvard Communications” seems to claim. “This is my Blackberry,” reads a Chinese advertisement bearing the American president’s smiling face, “the Blockberry Whirlwind 9500!”

If a “Blockberry”—or a Nokir, Suny Ericcsun, or Samsing—fails to make you feel like Obama, you can always commission a Chinese architect to build you an imitation White House. Some wealthy Chinese businessmen swear by them: work in the Oval Office and sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom.


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Nanny Academies

THE SOURCE: “The Few, the Proud, the Infantilized” by Bruce Fleming, in The Chronicle Review, Oct. 8, 2012.

Debating America’s Pivot

THE SOURCES: “The Problem With the Pivot” by Robert S. Ross, in Foreign Affairs, Nov.–Dec. 2012; “The Turn Away From Europe” by Josef Joffe, in Commentary, Nov. 2012; and “Asia’s New Age of Instability” by Michael Wesley, in The National Interest, Nov.–Dec. 2012.

The Surge Goes Awry

THE SOURCE: “Bureaucracy Does Its Thing, Again” by Frances Z. Brown, in The American Interest, Nov.–Dec. 2012.

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