Ian Buruma: China's much-heralded rise has business in thrall to an enemy of democracy
Much of the reporting in the west about China's extraordinary economic growth - skyscraper cities sprouting like concrete forests, entire industries taken over, massive markets opening up - has a tone of awe, sometimes tempered by environmental worries and the odd caveat about human rights. "Nine per cent growth," said one American observer, "is not a boom, it is a transformation." But there is a strong hint of anxiety, too: will China dominate the world? What can the west do to compete with this strange and ancient civilisation of worker bees and autocrats?
Fear of the far east probably goes back at least to the fifth century, when Attila the Hun's warriors left a trail of devastation from the Eastern Roman Empire all the way to what is now France. Then Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes reached the outskirts of Vienna in 1241. But the modern idea of yellow peril is commonly ascribed to the Americans. The influx of Chinese immigrants, in the late 19th century, provoked fears of economic competition (those worker bees), heathenism, and racial pollution. To protect his purity and livelihood, the white man had to save civilisation from the oriental menace, represented in the 1920s by Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu Manchu.
In fact, as is the case with so many New World prejudices, yellow peril also has a European provenance. Kaiser Wilhelm II was obsessed by it. He sent ferocious messages to his cousin Nicky, the Russian tsar, urging him to defend the borders of civilisation against "the yellow danger". These missives were often illustrated by the kaiser himself with cartoons of flying Buddhas emerging from thunderclouds to destroy the western world. Kaiser Bill's outbursts were usually provoked by the murder of Christian missionaries in China. When the Boxers attacked missionaries in 1900, he sent German troops to China as part of a western (and Japanese) effort to crush the rebellion. Seeing off his soldiers at Wilhelmshaven, he couched the expedition in oddly religious terms.
"Show yourselves Christians," he cried, "happily enduring in the face of the heathens! ... Give the world an example of virility and discipline. Anyone who falls into your hands falls on your sword! Just as the Huns under King Etzel created for themselves a thousand years ago a name which men still respect, you should give the name of German such cause to be remembered in China for a thousand years that no Chinaman, no matter whether his eyes be slit or not, will dare look a German in the face."
Huns were hardly Christians, of course, but never mind. In fact, the Christian factor is with us still. Americans, in particular, have a history of missionary zeal in China. The vast empire of heathens was always a temptation for religious entrepreneurs who wished to bring hundreds of millions of souls to the bosom of the Lord. When George Bush recently visited China, he said little about human rights, but what little he did say mostly concerned the rights of Christians. "May God bless the Christians of China," he wrote at a church in Beijing. This was entirely in keeping with a certain tradition in east-west relations.
Western fascination with China was, however, not always hostile, inspired by religious zeal, or even fearful. For much of European history, China was far enough away to be an abstraction, a kind of fantasy kingdom, an exotic utopia, where everything seemed to be back to front or upside down. This was true as late as the 18th century, the great era of literary and artistic chinoiserie, even though there had been enough accurate accounts of China to get a more realistic picture by then. ...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Fear of the far east probably goes back at least to the fifth century, when Attila the Hun's warriors left a trail of devastation from the Eastern Roman Empire all the way to what is now France. Then Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes reached the outskirts of Vienna in 1241. But the modern idea of yellow peril is commonly ascribed to the Americans. The influx of Chinese immigrants, in the late 19th century, provoked fears of economic competition (those worker bees), heathenism, and racial pollution. To protect his purity and livelihood, the white man had to save civilisation from the oriental menace, represented in the 1920s by Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu Manchu.
In fact, as is the case with so many New World prejudices, yellow peril also has a European provenance. Kaiser Wilhelm II was obsessed by it. He sent ferocious messages to his cousin Nicky, the Russian tsar, urging him to defend the borders of civilisation against "the yellow danger". These missives were often illustrated by the kaiser himself with cartoons of flying Buddhas emerging from thunderclouds to destroy the western world. Kaiser Bill's outbursts were usually provoked by the murder of Christian missionaries in China. When the Boxers attacked missionaries in 1900, he sent German troops to China as part of a western (and Japanese) effort to crush the rebellion. Seeing off his soldiers at Wilhelmshaven, he couched the expedition in oddly religious terms.
"Show yourselves Christians," he cried, "happily enduring in the face of the heathens! ... Give the world an example of virility and discipline. Anyone who falls into your hands falls on your sword! Just as the Huns under King Etzel created for themselves a thousand years ago a name which men still respect, you should give the name of German such cause to be remembered in China for a thousand years that no Chinaman, no matter whether his eyes be slit or not, will dare look a German in the face."
Huns were hardly Christians, of course, but never mind. In fact, the Christian factor is with us still. Americans, in particular, have a history of missionary zeal in China. The vast empire of heathens was always a temptation for religious entrepreneurs who wished to bring hundreds of millions of souls to the bosom of the Lord. When George Bush recently visited China, he said little about human rights, but what little he did say mostly concerned the rights of Christians. "May God bless the Christians of China," he wrote at a church in Beijing. This was entirely in keeping with a certain tradition in east-west relations.
Western fascination with China was, however, not always hostile, inspired by religious zeal, or even fearful. For much of European history, China was far enough away to be an abstraction, a kind of fantasy kingdom, an exotic utopia, where everything seemed to be back to front or upside down. This was true as late as the 18th century, the great era of literary and artistic chinoiserie, even though there had been enough accurate accounts of China to get a more realistic picture by then. ...