For many visitors to Beijing, the first sight of the Great Wall at Badaling just outside town is the ultimate China experience.
But just as this majestic structure comes into view in the mountains, the traveller is distracted by an almost-finished theme park, complete with the pink spires of a Rhineland castle. To cultural crusaders there can be only one thing more offensive than Disneyland, and that is imitation Disneyland. In China however, despite the anti-Americanism of the past year, no one seems to mind. The advance of American imperialism in the form of Mickey Mouse, McDonald's, KFC and Starbucks continues relentlessly.
Hong Kong, we were told, would become a more Chinese city when it slipped from the embrace of the British empire into the arms of the motherland in 1997, but here too, cuteness has prevailed over Confucius.
Just this month Hong Kong Chief Executive Mr Tung Cheehwa, flanked by a human-size Mickey Mouse, announced that a Walt Disney theme park would open in Hong Kong in 2005 at a site near the airport.
Future visitors will see Disneyland, complete with Main Street USA, Peter Pan's Neverland, Toontown, Sleeping Beauty's Castle and an 1880's Wild West fort before even arriving in the city known as the "Pearl of the Orient".
The dumbing down of Hong Kong has met with no cultural resistance from Beijing. Prof Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, of Hong Kong City University, said the development of information flow, especially the Internet, had made it difficult for the Chinese government to prohibit its people from appreciating things foreign.
The Chinese leadership gave its blessing to Mr Tung's negotiations with Disney, which resulted in Hong Kong agreeing to meet almost all of the $4.1 billion cost of the park.
The arguments for and against the project have centred on money. Hong Kong defends its huge investment by claiming Disneyland will create 35,800 jobs and help lift the territory out of a prolonged recession.
The few objections have come from people worried about the effects on Hong Kong's infrastructure and environment of an estimated five million extra mainland tourists annually. The voices of critics such as Mr David Man, chairman of Hong Kong's Eco-Tourism Awareness Group, have been all but drowned out. "We're bringing US culture onto Chinese soil," he said. "Can traditional Chinese culture be sustained?"
Mr Louis Yu, programme director of the Hong Kong Arts Centre, doesn't think it will be a big problem. "I see positive results from the interaction with big American culture and big Chinese culture," he said. "We have always been a meeting place of East and West."
Before now, Beijing's answer to Disneyland has been the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park, where one can see the country's 56 nationalities in their native habitat and models of national monuments such as the Great Wall. For Chinese children this is no match for Fantasyland or the Little Mermaid.
The fact is that Disneyland is the best and most aggressively-marketed product of its kind in the world. Even Disneyland Paris, denounced by critics convinced that a rising tide of American popular culture was swamping France, is now a more popular destination for French families than the home-grown Asterix theme parks.
Ironically, Hong Kong's embrace of Mickey Mouse comes at a time when other forms of Western culture are in retreat in the face of an unexpected onslaught from the East.
Japanese teen music is sweeping Hong Kong and other Asian cities. The shelves of Asian shops are full of cute Japanese pop culture merchandise such as Hello Kitty, a cat with a bow and no mouth, GTO comic books featuring Japanese delinquent heroes and cuddly creatures made from plants and animals known as Pokemon.
Japanese films, television serials and pop music are topping the ratings throughout eastern and southern Asia.
Smart business executives combine the most profitable of both invading cultures: in Singapore two months ago, queues formed at a McDonald's when it offered Hello Kitty dolls with hamburgers - an event which might be described as global "duo-culturalism".
Disney is relying on Asia to help end its two-year slump, and has not ruled out further theme parks in China. As evidence that it will meet little resistance for further expansion, one need only note that one of the main musical events staged in Beijing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China was Disney's Beauty and The Beast.
This played in Chinese with Chinese actors at the Beijing Theatre to a packed audience which included Vice-Premier Li Lanqing, and could be described as an example of Disney with Chinese characteristics - just as the great Wall at Badaling is now China with Disney characteristics.