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Since 1890, the growth of Eastern nations’ power was perceived as an imminent threat by broad sectors of American society, articulated under the concept of the ‘yellow peril’. This paper examines the positions of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) on this notion between 1904 and 1908, a period marked by increasing diplomatic tensions between Japan and the United States. Through an analysis of the SPA press and the minutes of its conventions, the study identifies how the party comprehensively addressed the three main meanings of this concept: economic competition from Asian immigrants, the industrialization of the East, and the rise of Japan as an imperialist power. These aspects were of great importance for shaping the SPA’s positions on imperialism, colonial policy, and inter-imperialist war. On the one hand, the anti-immigration sentiment within the SPA undermined any potential for bonds of friendship and internationalism with Japan and also affected its critique of colonial policy, which focused on the competition from native workers. On the other hand, Japan’s modernization and rise as an imperialist power rendered imperialism no longer a viable strategy for American capitalists, ultimately contributing to the collapse of capitalism due to its failure to find new markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the various ways in which pacificists and socialists in France responded to the 'yellow peril' from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) to the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). I identify and examine four different attitudes they developed towards the 'yellow peril'. On the one hand, some pacificists and socialists perceived it as a reality and used it as a means of exposing the problems of expansionism but differed on their views of what Asia would become for the West: whereas pacifists like Paul d'Estournelles de Constant invoked Asia as a potential existential threat, certain socialists welcomed 'yellow' workers as future comrades. On the other hand, there were people who viewed the 'yellow peril' as a myth or some sort of ideological smokescreen. Roughly speaking, they fell into two groups: socialists who treated it as a set of false ideas created to justify Tsarist imperialism, which practically led them to embrace Japanese imperialism, and revolutionary syndicalists who, opposing capitalist exploitation and expansionism in general, dismissed it as part of bourgeois ideology. Thus, I ultimately argue that the 'yellow peril' was less of an imperialist ideology consisting of negative racial stereotypes about East Asians than a versatile concept that was used against as well as for racial stereotyping and expansionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the persistent association between China and the apocalypse in Western political thought. Using the 1979 film The China Syndrome as a starting point, it examines how China is depicted as the specter of global catastrophe: as a society unable to recover from its own nineteenth-century collapse, and the post-apocalyptic form assumed by Europe itself. Through the writings of John Stuart Mill and Niall Ferguson, the paper highlights how the trope of "apocalyptic China" has evolved with shifts in global power, reflecting Western anxieties about its own decline and the perceived inevitability of China's rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By inscribing and ascribing particular indexical signifiers to people while ignoring and/or dismissing actual individual performative enactments and self-identifications, neoliberal multicultural discourses, in claiming tolerance and acceptance, frame racialized people as "an essentialized and totalized unit that is perceived to have little or no internal variation" (Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 2000. Racialized discourses and ethnic epistemologies. In Norman K. Denzin & Yvonna S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research, 2nd edn., 257–277. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). In doing so, these discourses supposedly celebrating 'diversity' disregard the complexities, hybridities, and differences that constitute and are constitutive of any individual. Thus, in drawing on the ethos of tolerance and acceptance, 'multicultural' discourses paper over societal conflicts, internal divisions and oppressions, and homogenize racial, linguistic, and cultural identities ignoring the complex identifications people may perform and hold in any given interactional situational context. In this critical autoethnography, I illustrate how an indexical order of 'Asianness' in its 'model minority' variety has been shaped and subverted at times by my situated appropriations of various enregisterments (Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and social relations. Cambridge University Press) of a working-class heteronormative masculinity in interactional contexts. These enactments illuminate how an indexical order of an Asian American male has continually shifted and reacted to such positionings in a white supremacy society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the racialization of Asians in Australia through the dialectic of the “yellow peril” and “model minority”. It uses the specific historical case study of People’s Republic of China nationals in Australia at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989) who were ultimately given permanent residence. Through analysis of archival sources and Australia’s print media in this period (1989–1993), the article identifies how the Tiananmen Chinese were at once characterized as educated, hard-working and worthy additions to the Australian nation (model minority), while also appearing as a threat to the order and integrity of the immigration system (yellow peril). The article draws on Asian American theorist Colleen Lye’s argument about the economistic character of Asian racial form. By using her framework, I suggest the value of deepening engagements with Asian American studies in examining the racialization of Asians in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese restaurants in the US are symbolic "canaries in the coalmine," indicating widespread anti-Asian hate by attracting negative reactions from the American community but also inspiring love and resistance from the Asian American community. This study examines the relationship between the number of American Chinese restaurant closures, lowered revenue, and the incidence of anti-Asian American hate crimes in the US during the 2019–2022 period. During the pandemic, many American Chinese restaurants lost revenue or closed down. The findings of this study suggest that hatred directed at Chinese American restaurants historically and because of COVID-19 correlates with the incidence of anti-Asian hate crimes. Chinese Americans and Asian Americans are fighting back against this xenophobia via social media campaigns urging consumers to support Chinese restaurants and Chinatowns economically and socially. The vacillating reception of Chinese restaurants in the US shows how culture and consumption are intimately interrelated with society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pandemics and food consumption have long been racialised against non-Western peoples. Yellow Peril tropes of Chinese as disease vectors and consumers of 'weird' wildlife, such as bats, were conjoined again with COVID-19. US politicians and media have especially deployed these themes to blame Chinese for the pandemic, alongside tropes of Chinese as cruel, deceitful incompetents, thus serving a wider mobilisation against China that fuels a new Cold War and anti-Asian attacks. Wildlife consumption as a spur to COVID's Wuhan outbreak is, however, an unverified supposition. Many societies consume wildlife, but it was uncommon in China and mostly shunned by the time of COVID-19's onset. Meanwhile, significant US wildlife consumption continues. Yellow Peril racialisation of the pandemic and demonisation of China also continue, both despite and because of Western politicians' COVID-19 failings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terms “race" and "racism" originated in Europe and were imported into the vocabulary of modern Japanese. How did Meiji Japanese intellectuals react to the classification of the Japanese people as the “yellow race”? Was Japanese identity constructed through the appropriation of white civilization, including colonialism? To what extent are the notions of "race" and "racism" applicable to the analysis of discrimination of various kinds in Japanese society?

This study was an initial qualitative exploration to (a) capture varied experiences of racial microaggressions directed at Chinese immigrant women before and during Covid and (b) investigate different forms and levels of microaggressions based on socioeconomic status, age, and other characteristics. Racial microaggressions were examined by interviewing 12 foreign‐born, Chinese immigrant women aged 23 to 80 years old, with most of the participants identified as middle class or above. Building upon previous scholarship on racial and gendered microaggressions, an analytical framework was developed using 12 major themes to identify and interpret discriminatory behaviors. Our main findings suggest that the research sample encountered more blatant hate incidents and expressed heightened concern over their physical safety in the post‐Covid period. Young women, compared to their older counterparts, were more inclined to report microaggression episodes and distinguish more subtle forms of discrimination. These findings could serve as preliminary evidence for future research.

This article traces one manifestation of the unique process of Asian-American abjection (Shimakawa, K. [2002]. "I should be—American!" Abjection and the Asian (American) Body. In National Abjection (pp. 23–56). Duke University Press.), produced from a dialectic of an aspirational model minority myth and the targeted status of an ever-evolving yellow peril. I highlight the nuances of such abjection through a "lacking personality" metanarrative imposed on Asian-American finalists on the reality television show, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD). I forward an Asian-American rhetorical approach informed by critical rhetorics of race by Lacy and Ono (2011. Critical Rhetorics of Race. New York University Press) and Ono and Pham (2009. Asian Americans and the media , Vol. 2. Polity) to problematize rhetoric that abjects Asian-Americans. I suggest that depictions of Asian-Americans as lacking personality in popular media are part of the same continuum of racialized yellow peril abjection, upholding a conditional belonging that allows anti-Asian racial violence to flourish, particularly in moments of crisis and public moral panic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing pandemic, COVID-19, has demonstrated how quickly depictions of Asian individuals can shift from "model minority" to "yellow peril" during times of crisis. These times were particularly difficult for Asian postsecondary international students who were directly impacted by these shifting narratives, as many faced discrimination, violence, and prejudice as a result of the rise of anti-Asian hate that occurred across Canada. Thus, utilizing critical race theory (CRT), the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of these contrasting narratives, how the "model minority" and "yellow peril" can contribute to the maintenance of White supremacy, and possible considerations and interventions to better support Asian international postsecondary students during their studies in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comedy in Perdiendo el norte/Off Course (2015) and its sequel Perdiendo el este/Off Course to China (2019) is a tool for mitigating national anxieties related to migration and economic exchange following the global financial crisis. Both films follow Spaniards who emigrate in the wake of the economic crisis. While Perdiendo el norte follows a tradition of comedic españoladas (typically Spanish films), employing the familiar foil of Germany, Perdiendo el este introduces China as an economic challenger. Perdiendo el norte borrows heavily from its predecessor, Vente a Alemania, Pepe/Come to Germany, Pepe (1971), but ultimately flips the script on Vente's nationalist nostalgia, advocating for greater transnationalism. Perdiendo el este, on the other hand, reinscribes a nationalist agenda by framing the Chinese as incompatible with Spanish national identity. Its preoccupation with Chinese investment in post-crisis Spain can be read as a reflection of the region's angst about its own economic and cultural capital in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of the nineteenth century, texts and discourses around the world abounded with fear and contempt for Chinese immigrants, specifically contract workers. This outpouring is remembered as talk of a "Yellow Peril." Charles Pearson introduced the theme (though not its best-known phrase) to the English-speaking world in 1893, with the publication of a bleak manifesto he'd written about the West's future as he saw it. The present article examines Pearson's views and the intellectual debates regarding them. A century ago, the international supply of Chinese workers contributed little to China's prosperity. Today, as a center of consumer goods supply, China contributes to the prosperity of the Western capitalist world while continuing its own rapid economic growth. For this reason, today's apprehension about China is based on the fear of the emergence of a communist regime as a superpower. In this respect, the current fear of China differs from the "Yellow Peril" discourse of the past. Nevertheless, the discourse may have influenced today's concerns and apprehensions about China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines The Foreigner , the 2017 film adaptation of British novelist Stephen Leather's The Chinaman (1992), starring the Hong Kong/Chinese martial arts film star Jackie Chan. The film reveals a cosmopolitical cinematic revision that foregrounds the contradictions and paradoxes of Yellow Peril, present when the film was made, during the time of Brexit in the United Kingdom. By investigating Chan's screen persona, which has roots in Hong Kong/Chinese martial arts cinema, I focus on how the film derives and builds upon Chan's transnational status as a cinema icon to critically engage with the conventional Yellow Peril narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discussed the discrimination that occurs in the life of Asian immigrants. Yellow Peril phenomenon occurs in 1882 in Europe and America which resulted in racial discrimination toward immigrants from China and Japan. In this study, the author uses data sources from a series drama entitled Tenno No Ryouriban (2015). This series drama showed the life of two immigrants from Japan named Tokuzo Akiyama and Shintaro Matsui who migrated to France. In their daily life, Tokuzo and Shintaro would frequently receive discrimination from white people. This study uses literal sociology. To obtain descriptions regarding discrimination, the author would analyze data in the form of scenes and dialogue excerpts are taken from the series drama Tenno No Ryouriban. Furthermore, there was also support theory Mise-En-Scene to help to explain the reason why a scene was shown in a particular manner by the film director. Result of this study showed that there were several scenes and dialogues excerpt which describe discrimination in various forms, such as Explicit Discrimination and Implicit Discrimination, and Institutional Discrimination and Cultural Discrimination. The author found the cause of discrimination described in the series drama Tenno No Ryouriban, which related to race differences such as differences in skin color, the nation of origin, and body height.

In COVID-19's first months, US politicians and media forecast that a contrast between Chinese deception and incapability and Western success against the pandemic might fatally sink internal confidence in China's party-state. They also predicted that it would diminish China externally, as it came to be seen as endangering the world by spreading biological pollution. A "China's Chernobyl" prediction became the latest "China collapse" wish-fulfillment. This speculation rests on two contradictory yet co-existing Yellow Peril tropes: "deceit and incompetence" and "world domination." However, no empirical basis exists for either notion: China prevailed against the pandemic and lacks the capacity for global hegemony. "China's Chernobyl" is most relevant then as a wish that creates a belief, that China should and could collapse. That in turn bolsters the US-led mobilization to counter China as a "strong competitor" and frames China as the common enemy, thereby promoting Western transnational and US internal cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As African communities start to assert a more visible presence in Chinese cities and vice versa, highly racialized discourses have appeared online with regards to a new Yellow Peril in Africa and correspondingly, an unprecedented Black Peril in China. On one hand, such malicious sentiments manifest in unofficial realms that stand in stark contrast with the official rhetoric of South--South Cooperation championed by the Chinese and African states. On the other hand, cultural production, especially fictional narratives, has emerged as another unofficial realm that seeks to humanize China--Africa relations from different angles. This article focuses on Mukuka Chipanta's A Casualty of Power, a novel with a unique focus on Chinese involvement in Zambia's mining industry. Based on contemporary incidents of interracial conflicts between African mine workers and their Chinese supervisors, the novel offers a multiplicity of critical perspectives and background stories concerning the role of Chinese migrants in Zambian society. Engaging China--Africa cultural production with the conceptual framework of the Global South, I point out the novel's achievements as well as limits in its humanization efforts and argue that these limits demonstrate the need to break away from narrow definitions of "the Global South Novel" determined by value positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern scholarship has drawn hasty and numerous parallels between the Yellow Peril discourses of the 19th- and 20th-century plagues and the recent racialization of infectious disease in the 21st-century. While highlighting these similarities is politically useful against Sinophobic epidemic narratives, Michel Foucault argues that truly understanding the past's continuity in the present requires a more rigorous genealogical approach. Employing this premise in a comparative analysis, this work demonstrates a critical discontinuity in the epidemic imaginary that framed the Chinese as pathogenic. Consequently, those seeking to prevent future disease racialization must understand modern Sinophobia as fundamentally distinct from that of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic as a case study, this paper engages with debates on the assimilation of Asian Americans into the US mainstream. While a burgeoning scholarship holds that Asians are "entering into the dominant group" or becoming "White," the prevalent practices of othering Asians and surging anti‐Asian discrimination since the pandemic outbreak present a challenge to the assimilation thesis. This paper explains how anger against China quickly expands to Asian American population more broadly. Our explanation focuses on different forms of othering practices, deep‐seated stereotypes of Asians, and the role of politicians and media in activating or exacerbating anti‐Asian hatred. Through this scrutiny, this paper augments the theses that Asian Americans are still treated as "forever foreigners" and race is still a prominent factor in the assimilation of Asians in the United States. This paper also sheds light on the limitations of current measures of assimilation. More broadly, the paper questions the notion of color‐blindness or post‐racial America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1912 and for numerous decades, Sax Rohmer contributed to create, and recreate, an archvillain of tremendous vigour, Fu Manchu, whose routing lives, appallingly magnetic powers, subterranean connections made him a global star. In this paper I peruse this multi-faceted serial icon, formulaic and yet also changing over time, and see its presence and apparent disappearance from the cultural panorama of the Anglophone world. This multimedial serial figure has been let loose, like Frankenstein's creature, and its progeny may still be detected in film, cartoons and global popular culture.

The first Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the 1820s and initially their presence did not result in improving the American perception of China. On the contrary – intense immigration from China led to the development of racist and xenophobic attitudes towards the Chinese (Yellow Peril), which culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. During the Second World War, China became an important ally of the United States, which triggered a succession of changes to laws barring Chinese immigration (Magnuson Act). Contemporary Chinese Americans – particularly Taiwanese Americans – can be located in the upper spheres of immigrant population: they are considered to be a well-educated and affluent group. This paper presents the historical and contemporary socio-economic characteristics of the Sino-American population set against a historical and legal background.

Over the past several years there have been a number of racially-tinged incidents in South Africa involving 'the Chinese.' Simultaneously, the love affair between Chinese and South African government leaders has expanded to include local Chinese community leaders and local ANC officials. Based on ongoing research on Chinese communities in South Africa I examine these conflicting phenomena and explore the various ways in which the three main ethnic Chinese communities – Chinese South African, Taiwanese South African, and mainland Chinese migrant – and other South Africans respond to these often conflicting social and political messages. I argue that China's global ascendance and South Africa's increasing national-level dependence on China encourages some actors (both Chinese and non-Chinese) to opportunistically wield the China card while other non-Chinese South Africans respond with fear and racism, invoking Yellow Peril narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is the greatest challenge facing the world today. Yet fears of the yellow peril are not new. They started with fear of the rise of Bolshevism and later the Soviet Union after World War II (the red scare) and European fears of the USA becoming dominant following WW2 and the subsequent fear of the spectacular technological rise of Japan. The article shows that considerable differences exist among such challengers in their size, political system, ideological basis, military strength, geopolitical ambitions and, finally, cultural differences. These fears have proven to be overblown. Still, they play a positive role as a wakeup call to draw attention to the need to adapt to the tectonic changes occurring in the entire world system and the strategies/policies of certain individual actors. The explanatory power of different theories with respect to certain cases is considered. Somewhere along the line, the greatest weight has been attributed to economic/quantitative factors (Japan, USA, China), ideological/ military ones with respect to the Soviet Union/ Russia, while elsewhere more ethnocentric factors are stressed (Japan, China). A multidisciplinary approach is called for because a single discipline is unable to explain such tectonic changes and the ensuing reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Asians, despite their positioning as a "model minority," have not been immune from the consequences of the heightened racist and nationalist rhetoric witnessed lately in the United States. However, such sentiments about the South Asian immigrant community are not new, as they are reflective of a "yellow peril" discourse. This study analyzes South Asian Americans' responses to a TIME Magazine column complaining about their influx into Edison, New Jersey. It first explores the racial formation that the model minority myth, in dialectical relationship with the yellow peril discourse, has produced among South Asians. Through this analysis, this study critically analyzes how South Asian Americans' discourses both reinforce and challenge their racialized status positions and identities as the model minority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using contemporary science fiction as a barometer, we can see the African imaginary to be seemingly preoccupied with the idea of China and with forecasting various dystopian scenarios regarding the future of China–Africa relations. Yet, through an examination of three short stories from Southern Africa – Tendai Huchu's 'The Sale' (2013), Abigail Godsell's 'Taal' (2009) and Mandisi Nkomo's 'Heresy' (2013) – I explore a complex relationship whose participants are intimately aligned: China and Africa have an historical connection that asks us to take seriously the practice and potential of political friendship. Through a close reading of these short stories, it becomes possible to consider how the relationship need not result in Chinese neocolonialism and exploitation. Working with the conceptual framework of political friendship, I illustrate how these short stories cumulatively serve to unravel easy distinctions between the friend and the enemy, thereby intimating that, in the future, southern Africa can benefit from approaching China as both friend and enemy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Print media has had a profound impact on shaping conservative ideology, political practice, and racial boundary making. While scholarship on US conservatism contributes important elements of its economic, political, and social philosophy by highlighting the role of racialization within the black/white binary, little attention has been historically paid to other forms of racialization within US conservatism. Through a discourse analysis of National Review from 1955 to 1975, I offer a corrective by examining how racial tropes are used to reinforce the conservative political project of anti-communism. These racialized tropes highlight how National Review characterized East Asian nations as uncivilized and savage, and thus poised for communist exploitation. I explain how yellow peril discourse was linked to communist infiltration amongst US conservative writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically interrogates East Asian academics' positional identities in UK universities, internationalisation and diversification against the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework. Contemporary UK policy promoting racial equality and diversity is often over-generalised, while the critical race theory-based literature has focused on hegemonic notions of 'white privilege'. Neither discourse provides an adequate, comparative perspective of power relations within diverse racial and ethnic groups. In advancing this perspective, the article compares the experiences of two groups of East Asian academics working in UK universities. One group is foreign-born but has strong British identities following their English élite education. The other group came to the UK for postgraduate studies and/or chose to work in Britain. The paper changes the picture of a static, black and white perspective in the BME policy and CRT literature by offering a dynamic, fluid discourse involving East Asian academics' narratives of their positional identities and choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically interrogates East Asian academics' positional identities in UK universities, internationalisation and diversification against the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework. Contemporary UK policy promoting racial equality and diversity is often over-generalised, while the critical race theory-based literature has focused on hegemonic notions of 'white privilege'. Neither discourse provides an adequate, comparative perspective of power relations within diverse racial and ethnic groups. In advancing this perspective, the article compares the experiences of two groups of East Asian academics working in UK universities. One group is foreign-born but has strong British identities following their English élite education. The other group came to the UK for postgraduate studies and/or chose to work in Britain. The paper changes the picture of a static, black and white perspective in the BME policy and CRT literature by offering a dynamic, fluid discourse involving East Asian academics' narratives of their positional identities and choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joining recent scholarly efforts to free the study of the Yellow Peril from the conventional framework of Asian American and postcolonial studies, this paper offers a comparative analysis of the manifestations of this mutable racial discourse in twentieth-century Anglophone and Sinophone literatures. As a case in point, I focus on the Chinese dissident writer Wang Lixiong and his 'racist' appropriation of the Yellow Peril ideology in fin-de-siècle Anglo-American popular writings. By juxtaposing his canonical work China Tidal Wave, known in Chinese as Huang Huo ('Yellow Peril'), with the Asian invasion fictions by Jack London and M. P. Shiel, I argue that instead of some kind of indisputable metaphysical truth, the Yellow Peril ideology manifested in these texts is merely a performative cultural practice that shifts its functions and allegiances according to the situated socio-political agenda of its practitioner. This performative nature is made explicit through my analyses of the changes of their paratexts as these texts travel across languages, leading to further reflections on theoretical concepts such as Occidentalism, the postcolonial palimpsest, Sinophone literature, and world literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of COVID-19, or the Coronavirus, has sparked a wave of anti-Asian attacks around the world. The cultural logic that does not distinguish among Asian cultural and ethnic groups, as well as the need to find scapegoats, reignites the trope of the "Yellow Peril." The Yellow Peril is deeply entwined with whiteness and this forum calls for more interrogation of the ways that whiteness reinscribes its position-locally and globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese are often said to 'self-segregate' in Africa. Chinese ethnocentricity is typically offered as an explanation for the putative non-interaction. Meanwhile Chinese are not compared to other non-indigenous people in Africa, implying unique Chinese self-isolation. Due to China's semi-peripheral dynamics however, the contemporary Chinese presence in Africa cannot be generalized into a single category. Based on surveys, interviews, and documents, we examine the varied presence of Chinese in Africa, including residential patterns acquisition of local African languages, and socialization patterns, and draw distinctions between Chinese expatriates and Chinese migrants. Factors affecting Chinese adaptation include local political environment, recentness of migration, language barriers, and corporate policies to mitigate crime and conflict. We argue that most Chinese in Africa are not self-isolated and not more isolated in Africa than are other Asian migrants and whites there. Claims of Chinese self-isolation reflect a longstanding, global Yellow Peril discourse that persists despite discrediting evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the 1820s and initially their presence did not result in improving the American perception of China. On the contrary – intense immigration from China led to the development of racist and xenophobic attitudes towards the Chinese (Yellow Peril), which culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. During the Second World War, China became an important ally of the United States, which triggered a succession of changes to laws barring Chinese immigration (Magnuson Act). Contemporary Chinese Americans – particularly Taiwanese Americans – can be located in the upper spheres of immigrant population: they are considered to be a well-educated and affluent group. This paper presents the historical and contemporary socio-economic characteristics of the Sino-American population set against a historical and legal background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia and China rapidly restore communication after the Cold War, but the Chinese immigration issue is also widely exaggerated and even described as 'Yellow Peril again' in Russia. The so-called Yellow Peril is not only a Russian object perception but also a cross-generational conflict between Russia and China. Furthermore, it will be related to the subsequent development of the Russian Far East and Siberia. The Chinese immigration constitutes psychological and survival non-traditional security impacts on Russia and also forms some kind of social competition with Russians. It is vital for Russia to cooperate with its eastern neighbor to accelerate the development of the Russian Far East and Siberia, but national security and social stability are the prerequisites for cooperation. Nevertheless, it is more significant to rebuild self-confidence of the Russians in the Russian Far East and acknowledge that the East will not be a threat to Russia. As long as Russia realizes that it can enjoy unlimited possibilities in the East, the non-traditional security impacts caused by the Chinese immigration will automatically alleviate and even disappear. Today, most Russians are trapped in the dilemma of welcoming or refusing the Chinese immigrants; however, cultural exchange still has some effects and at least causes Russians to begin to positively treat the Chinese immigration and consider whether to accept China and cooperate with China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mr Wu Li Chang is little known today, but between 1913 and 1930, he was as familiar to Anglo-American audiences as the now notorious Fu Manchu. Starting life as a highly successful West End play, Mr. Wu was novelised by Louise Jordan Miln in 1918, then made into a film twice. The first version was made by the British company Stoll Picture Productions in 1919 featuring Matheson Lang from the original play as Mr Wu and the second by MGM in 1927 with Lon Chaney in the starring role. This paper explores the various transformations that Mr. Wu has undergone and argues that what began as re-articulation of the 'Yellow Peril' discourse turns into a more sympathetic and sentimental rendering of the dangerous Oriental. This softening facilitates crosscultural understanding but also neuters the threat of the Other at a moment when tumultuous events in China were a reminder of her dangerous volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I take the recent publication of several texts examining the historical and contemporary phenomena of Sinophobia, Orientalism, and Sinologism as an opening for theorizing underlying and related issues including pervasive anti-China biases in Western journalism and China's position therein. In addition to illustrating how the concepts of Orientalism arise from Western historical and epistemological foundations, I theorize what I call a 'new yellow journalism' that has grown in tandem with 'China's rise' and the threat this indicates to many Western observers, and how this threat and others like it have been met in the age of 'new imperialism.' I compare this new phenomenon with its historical antecedents, 'yellow journalism' and America's emergence as a imperialism power with the Spanish-American War (1898), and note several key insights offered by recent critical analyses of that period, which together suggest a confluence of different players, including policymakers, new media business models, and what I describe as a type of public 'corporatism' in which citizens, particularly Americans, function effectively as shareholders in maintaining hegemonic if not imperialist power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renshaw examines in comparative terms two of the most virulent manifestations of racial prejudice in early twentieth-century British society. The language of antisemitism and Sinophobia in the Edwardian period and the years preceding the First World War, the similarities and differences in the ways that these two forms of prejudice were articulated, and the overlap between them are analysed. Five strands of anti-Jewish and anti-Chinese sentiment and action are discussed. The first examines how international manifestations of antisemitism and Sinophobia, suspicions aimed at Jews and Chinese as transnational diasporic communities, and perceptions of these minorities, through Russian pogroms, the Boxer Rebellion in China and the post-Boer War economic situation in South Africa, were framed in narratives of victimhood and aggression. Second, the transnational and colonial circuits of racialized discourse and the relationship between periphery and metropole are considered, as are divergences in the articulation of anti-Jewish and anti-Chinese prejudice. The third strand investigates the use of the language of ‘invasion’, used by both the political right and the left in discussing Jewish and Chinese immigration and economic activity in Britain, with Chinese employment in British industries (in this period particularly as sailors on British ships) framed in the context of a demographic ‘Asiatic’ takeover of European societies. The fourth strand looks at the intersection of racial prejudice and sexual and social angst, the visceral association of immigrant groups with dirt and disease, and the sexual threat that racist and antisemitic literature attributed to Jews and Chinese. Finally, physical manifestations of antisemitism and Sinophobia in the period and the racial violence that occurred in Cardiff and Tredegar in 1911 will be described and placed in context. The article positions Edwardian antisemitism and Sinophobia as a transitory stage in the evolution of British racism: a bridge between the separate domestic and colonial forms of prejudice present in late Victorian discourse, and the new manifestations of racism located in British cities and ports, but aimed at non-white minorities, that emerged in the interwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the evolution of yellow peril tropes in a subset of US political discourse by conducting a close textual analysis of Mitt Romney’s rhetoric during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. I argue that Romney revised yellow peril tropes of the Chinese as immoral, ruthless scapegoats to construct China as an economic yellow peril. In turn, the threat posed by this peril is augmented by Romney’s use of anti-communist tropes, which draw upon deeply entrenched Cold War fears to position the United States and China as adversaries. This project provides insight into the functions of anti-China appeals in U.S. presidential campaign discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]