In 2010, Mitch Moxley wrote “Rent a White Guy,” an amusing and insightful first-person Atlantic report about being hired by a Chinese firm to be a make-believe American businessperson. “Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face,” he was told. In a New York Times documentary short, David Borenstein provides an excellent visual tour of the practice five years on, as it’s become fashionable for desperate real-estate developers of remotely located properties to temporarily stock their buildings with Western workers or performers to make the provincial neighborhoods appear like “international cities of the future.” It reveals a sense of inferiority still felt by the Chinese even as they’ve moved to the center of the global stage. He describes the assignment thusly:

In provincial West China, I filmed specialty firms that collect groups of foreigners whom they rent out to attend events. Clients can select from a menu of skin colors and nationalities; whites are the most desirable and expensive. The most frequent customers are real estate companies. They believe that filling their remote buildings with foreign faces, even for a day, suggests that the area is “international,” a buzzword in provincial areas that often translates to “buy.”•