"The ad [for China] shows us exotic temples, mist-shrouded mountains, twangy music, adorable children. It's so effective that whenever I see it I have to get out my Tiananmen picture book and take a look at the picture of the Chinese pro-democracy student lying in a fetal position, his brains sprayed across the pavement by a tank that ran over his head."

Yeah, and whenever I see anything portraying America in a good light I have to go reread http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_war_crimes, too. There's a legal term for unfair, inaccurate appeals to emotion: prejudicial. Arguments like that are stricken from the record and jury members are instructed to disregard them.

I guess this is a nitpick, as this isn't the focus of the article at all, though it's a heavy undercurrent. The article is a vivid portrayal of the state of technology in the strange world of Hong Kong nearly two decades ago, when it was in the odd position of being an almost modernized city, preparing to rejoin a significantly less developed far larger country. I love Neal Stephenson's writing -- this article being so incredibly well-written makes it worse, in fact -- but the side notes on gosh, how decadent and backwards China's totalitarian Communist government is! Unfair, inaccurate, prejudicial, presumptuous and elitist. American democracy hasn't been a roaring success anywhere besides America. It's even controversial whether it's been a roaring success in America. (Evil Corporate America, for example, if true, would be a failure of American democracy.)

From way back but I found it after enjoying his ,mother earth mother board, article so much. The man is brilliant in the long form essay genre...