Book review: The Yellow Peril by Christopher Frayling

by Christopher Frayling
Thames & Hudson

The extent of China's global ambition is a hot topic liable to spark anxiety. In his new chronicle which riffs on that emotion, cultural historian Christopher Frayling collates some memorably toxic anti-Chinese rants delivered by a bevy of scaremongers.

One of Frayling's most noxious sources must be British novelist Sax Rohmer, who dreamed up Dr Fu Manchu and some even worse bit-part characters. Take this freak from the first novel in the series, The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu (1913). "From behind a curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing, shook his head vigorously. 'No shavee - no shavee,' he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes."

The Rohmer content Frayling highlights seems as ugly as anti-Jewish propaganda the Nazis concocted. Yet in Rohmer's day, China posed no threat - divided against itself it was also dogged by constant famine, Frayling notes. Why Chinaphobia took root then is a mystery he fails to explain.

Still, Frayling, who has previously addressed every subject from vampires to spaghetti westerns, covers some intriguing ground. Besides exploring 19th-century opium dens with Charles Dickens, he analyses music hall culture and pulp literature tracts including Dr No. En route, in real life, Frayling meets some notable potentates, not least theorist Edward Said and Hong Kong's last governor, Chris Patten.

For the first time in two dire centuries, China has the feel-good factor - a sense of national pride, Patten says, adding the Chinese hold Britain responsible for their past decline. "I have slightly more sympathy with their point of view now - now I know more about how appallingly we behaved. You can't defend it in terms of current morality - but even by the standards of the time it was repellent."