YMMV / The Bear and the Dragon

• Anvilicious: The book isn't exactly subtle on Tom Clancy's personal political views towards abortion, liberalism, taxation and trade, and US foreign policy towards China at the time.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The book was written during the tail end of the Boris Yeltsin administration in Russia, when relations between Russia and the United States were steadily improving. Vladimir Putin came into power the same year the book was published, and with controversies such as the 2014 annexation of Crimea, interference into the 2016 United States election, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as well as closer relations between China and Russia, the idea of a Chinese invasion of Russia and a US-Russian alliance against them would be seen as a pipe dream today.
  • The book itself was published in 2000, depicting Chinese policies and the effects of such as contributing to President Ryan's comparison of the PRC to Nazi Germany. By the 2020s, due to the breakdown of bilateral relations during the Donald Trump presidency, many Republicans and conservatives began comparing China with Nazi Germany in their rhetorics (not helped that China is committing the same atrocities as Nazi Germany, such as running concentration camps, and destroying Uyghur, Tibetan, and Mongolian culture to replace it with their own). The spat with China also led to many Western nations passing protectionist economic measures, as in the book.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The level of friendly relations between US and Russia could only have occurred during the Clinton-Yeltsin era, and virtually unthinkable after Putin gained power.
  • The One Child Policy, which sparked off the plot of the book, was dropped by the Chinese government in 2015 due to an aging Chinese population.

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