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Buy New IPad. Flip Over. Understand U.S.-China Economics
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Today is International Wait in Line for Your New iPad Day, an annual rite of spring for thousands of urban American hipsters and an official holiday in many regions of the Internet. It will not, however, be celebrated in China.
That’s because the new iPad is not yet available in China, except in Hong Kong. It is being released first in the U.S. and nine other wealthy markets across four continents. Chinese consumers will live to wait another day. The irony here, almost as vivid as the new iPad’s 2048-by-1536-pixel screen, is that there are already millions of the devices in China. As it says on the back of every iPad: “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.”