I am doubtful about today’s usefulness of Sun Tzu’s wisdom as much as I am doubtful about the wisdom of the Chinese leaders in using it today as a tool of the much-advertised soft power (“Sun Tzu and the Art of Soft Power,” December 17, 2011). However, I am even more doubtful about the exaggerated reactions to all the above in the so-called west. Ploughing through your article with increasing difficulty, I was enchanted by Paris Hilton’s aphorism that seems to resolve the conundrum in one fell swoop: “Dress cute wherever you go, life is too short to blend in.” Your photograph of the well-endowed American celebrity caught reading Sun Tzu is a godsend. All the Chinese leaders have in mind with their promotion of the old general and soft power is dressing cute, as it were. It is their moment, and they can already tell that life is too short to blend in. Sun Tzu is but a distraction, and it is time to recognize it as such. All the credits for this reading of Chinese tomfoolery go to no-one else but Paris Hilton, of course.