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Kaz Ross, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania (Australia)
Source: Garcia Guevarra, Opinion Sur, 2009
Here Chinese people are caricatured as cheerful, badly
dressed communist cadres, old men and peasants, all with
squinty eyes and protruding teeth. Waving armfuls of cash,
they strike fear in their potential food source animals which
flee before them. The cartoon resonates with the image of
Chinese people as uncouth eaters of anything that moves. As
the well-known Chinese saying states: ‘So long as it has legs
but is not a table or chairs it can be eaten.
Although published in 2009, the cartoon draws on a
long argued debate about the security of the world’s food
resources in the face of a developing China. Some scholars
have argued that the prospect of a prosperous and developed
China was more menacing than that of a starving China
(Brown, 1995). Brown painted a grim picture for the planet if
China achieved the level of prosperity reached by most
developed countries of the world. A cashed up, wealthy and
rapacious China was a frightening apparition. Earlier fears
about the impact of China’s large population and its masslike
nature are invoked in these examples (Brown’s vision
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