I might agree that it isn't marketing itself as such if it wasn't written in the style of a first-person narrative, have "New York Times Magazine" banner across the top, and didn't have panoramic pictures every few paragraphs.

I don't know about you, but I react a lot differently to information presented in that format as opposed to something like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/business/china-foreign-po...