![A Chinese propaganda poster from 1951, during the Korean War. “The Justified Noose Awaits Them!” reads the headline. The axe-wielding soldier in the center is Harry Truman. Courtesy of Stefan Landsberger and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.
Jack London predicted the rise of China in a 1910 science-fiction story. The scenario he imagined wasn’t a happy one: China rapidly modernizes, conquers Asia, and eventually threatens Russia, the Middle East, even Europe. The secret of China’s success is sheer numbers. China’s miraculously high birth rate means “[t]here was no way to dam up the over-spilling monstrous flood of life.” And the Chinese invasion had already begun decades earlier, under the guise of immigration:
The process was simple. First came the Chinese immigration (or, rather, it was already there, having come there slowly and insidiously during the previous years). Next came the clash of arms and the brushing away of all opposition by a monster army of militia-soldiers, followed by their families and household baggage. And finally came their settling down as colonists in the conquered territory. Never was there so strange and effective a method of world conquest.
In response, the Western nations decide to annihilate China with a biological weapon built by an American scientist. The scene that ensues is the creepiest passage in a thoroughly creepy story. Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind:
[O]n May 1, 1976, had the reader been in the imperial city of Peking, with its then population of eleven millions, he would have witnessed a curious sight. He would have seen the streets filled with the chattering yellow populace, every queued head tilted back, every slant eye turned skyward. And high up in the blue he would have beheld a tiny dot of black, which, because of its orderly evolutions, he would have identified as an airship. From this airship, as it curved its flight back and forth over the city, fell missiles - strange, harmless missiles, tubes of fragile glass that shattered into thousands of fragments on the streets and house-tops. But there was nothing deadly about these tubes of glass. Nothing happened. There were no explosions… Of those who were very near, one or two thought they saw some mosquitoes fly out. That was all. The crowd set up a great laugh and dispersed.
Had the reader again been in Peking, six weeks later, he would have looked in vain for the eleven million inhabitants… The plague smote them all.
After the genocide, the West colonizes China with a tide of reverse immigration. “[T]he sanitation of China,” London calls it. Pretty sinister stuff. Although London was an occasional anti-Chinese racist, his story appears to be ironic. At least I hope so.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_longfmoAJM1qzzfyuo1_400.jpg)
A Chinese propaganda poster from 1951, during the Korean War. “The Justified Noose Awaits Them!” reads the headline. The axe-wielding soldier in the center is Harry Truman. Courtesy of Stefan Landsberger and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.
Jack London predicted the rise of China in a 1910 science-fiction story. The scenario he imagined wasn’t a happy one: China rapidly modernizes, conquers Asia, and eventually threatens Russia, the Middle East, even Europe. The secret of China’s success is sheer numbers. China’s miraculously high birth rate means “[t]here was no way to dam up the over-spilling monstrous flood of life.” And the Chinese invasion had already begun decades earlier, under the guise of immigration:
The process was simple. First came the Chinese immigration (or, rather, it was already there, having come there slowly and insidiously during the previous years). Next came the clash of arms and the brushing away of all opposition by a monster army of militia-soldiers, followed by their families and household baggage. And finally came their settling down as colonists in the conquered territory. Never was there so strange and effective a method of world conquest.
In response, the Western nations decide to annihilate China with a biological weapon built by an American scientist. The scene that ensues is the creepiest passage in a thoroughly creepy story. Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind:
[O]n May 1, 1976, had the reader been in the imperial city of Peking, with its then population of eleven millions, he would have witnessed a curious sight. He would have seen the streets filled with the chattering yellow populace, every queued head tilted back, every slant eye turned skyward. And high up in the blue he would have beheld a tiny dot of black, which, because of its orderly evolutions, he would have identified as an airship. From this airship, as it curved its flight back and forth over the city, fell missiles - strange, harmless missiles, tubes of fragile glass that shattered into thousands of fragments on the streets and house-tops. But there was nothing deadly about these tubes of glass. Nothing happened. There were no explosions… Of those who were very near, one or two thought they saw some mosquitoes fly out. That was all. The crowd set up a great laugh and dispersed.Had the reader again been in Peking, six weeks later, he would have looked in vain for the eleven million inhabitants… The plague smote them all.
After the genocide, the West colonizes China with a tide of reverse immigration. “[T]he sanitation of China,” London calls it. Pretty sinister stuff. Although London was an occasional anti-Chinese racist, his story appears to be ironic. At least I hope so.
