Yellow Peril is a racist color-metaphor and conspiracist trope that misrepresents the peoples of East Asia as an existential danger to the Western world.
The Chinese are portrayed as threatening because they are numerous and highly organized. For example in Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz's 1939 dystopian novel Instability Poland and the West are threatened by the "communized Chinese" "poised beyond powerless, disorganized, depopulated Russia' (p. 20). "Separating Poland from the Chinese avalanche was a belt of "buffer" (or "puffed-up") grand duchies: Lithuania, White Russia and the Ukraine, where an indescribable and utterly ordinary chaos reigned." (pp. 238-239). Witkiewicz's Chinese conquer Moscow and govern secretively and cruelly: "Those blasted yellow-skinned monkeys had built about them such an impenetrable wall of secrecy and were known for inflicting such hideous tortures - not only on spies caught red handed, but even on those who looked suspicious - that there was not an agent alive who, given enough time, could not be compromised. Spy missions, in fact, had ceased." (p. 458).
The Chinese are portrayed as threatening because they are suspected of executing nefarious plots. For example, in H.F. Heard's March 1947 short story "The President of the United States, Detective" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, China attempts to drown the West via forced Climate Change.
Novels[]
- Lorelle's 1880 short story "Battle of the Wabash in The Californian
- Gerald Heard's (H.F. Heard) March 1947 short story "The President of the United States, Detective" Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
- Robert Heinlein's 1949 science fiction novel Sixth Column
- Robert Heinlein's 1959 military science fiction novel Starship Troopers
- Ursula K. Le Guin's 1974 utopian novel The Dispossessed
- Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
- Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz's 1939 dystopian novel Instability
External[]
- Orientalism, Cyberpunk 2077, and Yellow Peril in Science Fiction Wired. 08-12-20 George Yang
- Yellow Perils of Robert Heinlein John Hickman European Journal of European Studies (Spring 2021)