Rat Race

Which is the sincerer form of flattery? Farfour the Jihad non-Mickey Mouse, or the state-owned we're-not-imitating-Disney amusement park in Beijing?

To some, China's status as the world factory is still debatable. But from soy sauce to Ferrari, its indisputable rank as the world copier gets Xerox jealous.

Chinese people are too smart. They do only what they do best—manufacturing—and leave the costly marketing to Disney. It doesn't even matter that the imitation mouse's ears are smaller than Mickey's, because the imitation outnumbers the genuine article so many times over people accept it as norm. And as if a population of 1.3 billion is not big enough a market, these imitation goods can be found worldwide. Factory workers are already pulling overtime now that every Muslim child has Farfour on their wish list. If only Disney could their hands on some of this newfound revenue, the loss made at Hong Kong Disneyland is but spare change.