Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril: the fiction and the fact Brand China

Abstract

Chinese people are often portrayed in media and films as a closed, mysterious community, master-minded behind the scenes by cruel gangsters and drug barons. This book confounds these stereotypes and exposes the systematic nature of racist ideology through a critical analysis of the myth of the "Yellow Peril", epitomized by the character of Fu Manchu, the stereotypical Oriental master-villain popularized in fiction and film of the 1920s. The myth is contrasted with the real lives of the Chinese communities in Britain and the contextualized historical relations between Britain and China. The persistence of the underlying themes and images in popular culture has implications for the present-day Chinese in Britain.