For an open-access edition, visit the Yellow Perils page on Manifold. https://manifold.uhpress.hawaii.edu/projects/yellow-perils China’s meteoric rise and ever expanding economic and cultural footprint have been accompanied by widespread global disquiet. Whether admiring or alarmist, media discourse and representations of China often tap into the myths and prejudices that emerged through specific historical encounters. These deeply embedded anxieties have shown great resilience, as in recent media treatments of SARS and the H5N1 virus, which echoed past beliefs connecting China and disease. Popular perceptions of Asia, too, continue to be framed by entrenched racial stereotypes: its people are unfathomable, exploitative, cunning, or excessively hardworking. This interdisciplinary collection of original essays offers a broad view of the mechanics that underlie Yellow Peril discourse by looking at its cultural deployment and repercussions worldwide. Building on the richly detailed historical studies already published in the context of the United States and Europe, contributors to Yellow Perils confront the phenomenon in Italy, Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Mongolia, Hong Kong, and China itself. With chapters based on archival material and interviews, the collection supplements and often challenges superficial journalistic accounts and top-down studies by economists and political scientists. Yellow Peril narratives, contributors find, constitute cultural vectors of multiple kinds of anxieties, spanning the cultural, racial, political, and economic. Indeed, the emergence of the term “Yellow Peril” in such disparate contexts cannot be assumed to be singular, to refer to the same fears, or to revolve around the same stereotypes. The discourse, even when used in reference to a single country like China, is therefore inherently fractured and multiple. The term “Yellow Peril” may feel unpalatable and dated today, but the ethnographic, geographic, and historical breadth of this collection—experiences of Chinese migration and diaspora, historical reflections on the discourse of the Yellow Peril in China, and contemporary analyses of the global reverberations of China’s economic rise—offers a unique overview of the ways in which anti-Chinese narratives continue to play out in today’s world. This timely and provocative book will appeal to Chinese and Asian Studies scholars, but will also be highly relevant to historians and anthropologists working on diasporic communities and on ethnic formations both within and beyond Asia. Contributors: Christos Lynteris David Walker Kevin Carrico Magnus Fiskesjö Romain Dittgen Ross Anthony Xiaojian Zhao Yu Qiu

China and Africa have long shared a history of allegiance and contact points through global political forces from the time of colonialism and the Cold War. With China’s rise as the new superpower, its presence in Africa has expanded, leading to significant economic, geopolitical and cultural shifts. While issues such as trade, aid and development have received much attention, Chinese and African encounters through the lens of the visual arts and material culture is a neglected field. Visualising China in Southern Africa: Biography, Circulation, Transgression is a ground-breaking volume that addresses this deficit through engaging with the work of contemporary African and Chinese artists while analysing broader material production that prefigures the current relationship. The essays are wide-ranging in their analysis of ceramics, photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, postcards, stamps, installations, political posters, cartoons and architecture. Visualising China in Southern Africa confines its focus to southern Africa, yet even within this region, the context is complex. Ethnicity and nationalism, the lingering influence of Cold War allegiances and colonial configurations all continue to play a role. The various visual cultures discussed in this volume emphasise the commonality of these categories, but also point towards other shared histories that transcend the nation-state category. The collection includes scholarly chapters, photo essays, interviews, and artists’ personal accounts, organised around four themes: material flows, orientations and transgressions, spatial imaginaries, and biographies. The artists, photographers, filmmakers, curators and collectors in this volume include: Stary Mwaba, Hua Jiming, Anawana Haloba, Gerald Machona, Nobukho Nqaba, Marcus Neustetter, Brett Murray, Diane Victor, William Kentridge, Kristin NG-Yang, Kok Nam, Mark Lewis, the Chinese Camera Club of South Africa, Wu Jing, Henion Han and Shengkai Wu.

The deepening of China’s engagement with Africa has also prompted the broadening of its interests on the continent. This has resulted in China’s expansion into increasingly riskier territories, which means there is a greater urgency to protect its interests from the political vagaries endemic to conflict-affected African states. This evolution marks a shift away from traditional perceptions of Chinese engagement in Africa as being limited to its economic interests, towards one where China becomes a politically interested and invested actor. This trend is paralleled by a macro-level reorientation of China’s foreign policy goals, where it envisions itself playing a stronger norm-setting role in the global arena. This policy insights paper explores the values and imperatives that motivate China’s engagement in peace and security, human rights and human security in Africa.

Relations between Chad and China have expanded and deepened since diplomatic ties were resumed in August 2006. Growing links have been underpinned by Chinese oil development operations, epitomised by the Rônier refinery project. This symbolises China's ascendancy in Chad following N'Djamena's rejection of its relations with the World Bankled Chad-Cameroon pipeline project. Despite recent turbulence, oil investment looks set to play the key part in China's continuing engagement in Chad and enhance the potential for stimulating economic growth, despite severe constraints and ongoing challenges. By investing in a refinery, and dealing with N'Djamena in a different way from the conditionality heavy approach of recent Western engagement, China has embarked on an innovative intervention of increasing importance in Chad. This is seen in the appropriation of China by the Chadian leadership under President Idriss Déby as a means to promote a range of social goals related to the domestic political objectives of his regime. However, tensions remain within the terms of the newly forged partnership. Whether China can follow through on and sustain its present engagement, and enable Chad to escape its historical confinement amidst chronic underdevelopment and protracted insecurity, remains to be seen.

Gabon's recent ambition to reduce its dependency on oil revenue by diversifying its economy coincides with China's growing investment in resource-rich African countries. Within the wide range of Sino-Gabonese co-operation, the mining sector -- and above all the Bélinga iron ore project -- is central to both parties' interests. Omar Bongo's regime promoted this large-scale project as the flagship of the national economy. However, despite the promise of infrastructure development and employment opportunities, Gabon's attempt at diversification seems limited and is not leading towards any major structural change. A number of issues have challenged the realisation of the Bélinga project and introduced new risks and costs for the Chinese. These include commodity price volatility, the death of President Bongo in 2009 and increasing dissent among civil society. The paper reviews development opportunities linked to the Bélinga project and analyses China's evolving approach towards the project.