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Kaz Ross, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania (Australia)
‘China, it seems, is recreating the vast army of bare
branches that plagued it during the nineteenth
century’(2004: 212).
The subconscious image of Chinese men evoked here
is not new. Portrayals of Chinese men as a vice prone,
lascivious ‘yellow peril’ that needs to be contained date back
over one hundred years. Hudson and den Boer have the
laudable aim of introducing a concern for women’s status
and rights into security studies/ Unfortunately, their book
does not critically analyse anti-Chinese racism nor engage
with the notion of orientalism. Their argument, therefore,
reinforces powerful orientalist images of China which have
long held a powerful hold over the Western imagination.
References
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United States Department of State The China White Paper, August 1949.
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Bakken, B., (2000). The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement. Social
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Banister, J., (1987). China’s Changing Population, Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Banister, J., (2004). ‘Shortage of Girls in China Today,’ Journal of Population
Research 21, no. 1, 19 – 45.
Bao Shichen, (1999). Anwu sizhong 26.2b cited in James Lee and Wang
Feng One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese
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Becker, J., (1996). Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine, New York: Henry Holt.
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