China and Orientalism

Introduction

Very few books have left a more lasting impression on scholars involved with non Euro-American cultures than Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), translated in 1999 both as Dongfangxue 東方學 in Hong Kong (published by Sanlian shudian三聯書店) and Dongfang zhuyi 東方主義 in Taiwan (by Lidu 立緒) in the same year. Orientalism is defined by Said as a style of thought that establishes an epistemological and ontological distinction between the West and the Orient, an essentialist and reductionist discourse which is constructed by imperial societies while at the same time nourishing imperial enterprise. From his point of view Orientalist scholarship is a constituent of the cultural dimension of that enterprise. Following Michel Foucault, for Said, knowledge cannot be independent from power, and therefore intellectuals cannot avoid the ideological and political dimension of their work. Actually, one of Said’s definitions of Orientalism points to scholarship: Orientalism is what Orientalist scholars do. Nevertheless, despite the polemical nature of this kind of claim, in the first years after the publication of his book, Said’s ideas aroused very few debates in the China area. China scholars presumed that Orientalism had not affected the China field of study and consequently it was irrelevant for the development of their research. Sinology had allegedly followed a very different path from that of “Oriental” studies and the biased discourse of Orientalism had nothing to do with sinologists. Indeed, in Orientalism Said himself only mentioned China in passing. Only after a decade or so, at the end of the 1980s, did China scholars begin to be more aware of the need to tackle the discursive reflections posed by Said and postcolonial theory in their research. As a consequence of this late development, the number of publications concerned with China and the question of Orientalism is still relatively low. Even so, the influence of Saidian reflections on China scholars has increased in recent years and is apparent in a few disciplines, such as literary or visual culture studies, while other academic fields have been much more reluctant to include it.

General Overviews

The number of monographs and articles dedicated to the question of Orientalism and China from a general perspective is low. Centered on Chinese history but with reflections that can be applied beyond that field, Dirlik 1996 provides an insightful analysis of the question and introduces the key concept of self-Orientalism. Hägerdal 1997 analyzes the debates about the influence of Orientalist ideas in Chinese studies and the approach of China scholars to their object of study. Vukovich 2013 critically examines the traces of Orientalism by contemporary history scholars. The analysis of Western perceptions of China has traditionally received more attention by China scholars, before and after Orientalism. Mackerras 1999 provides an excellent and critical account of the history of Western images of China, and Zhou 2006 accurately analyzes European views of China in the modern world, while the contributors of Hayot, et al. 2008 address more particular and diverse aspects of the ways China has been represented in the West.

Dirlik, Arif. “Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism.” History and Theory 35 (1996): 96–118.
DOI: 10.2307/2505446Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Dirlik examines the application of Said’s ideas to Chinese history and argues that the Chinese Other has been an agent that has historically taken part in the development of an Orientalist representation of itself.
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Hägerdal, Hans. “The Orientalism Debate and the Chinese Wall: An Essay on Said and Sinology.” Itinerario 21 (1997): 19–40.
DOI: 10.1017/S0165115300015217Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A review of the impact and the different reactions that Said aroused in Chinese studies until the end of the 1990s. The author argues that the relation between Chinese studies and Orientalism is nuanced, complex, and influenced by ideological factors.
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Hayot, Eric, Haun Saussy, and Steven G. Yao, eds. Sinographies: Writing China. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
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A collection of essays about the different perspectives and devices used in the Western construction of China from early modernity to the present. It critically examines topics related to Western representations of Chinese otherness such as imperialism, translation, popular culture, European writing of Chinese aesthetics, or Chinese American literature, among others.
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Mackerras, Colin. Western Images of China. Hong Kong and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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With an approach greatly influenced by Said, this work is a panoramic review of the images of China in the West, from ancient times to the contemporary world, and from scholarly works to the media or cinema, centered mainly in the Anglophone world.
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Vukovich, Daniel. China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the PRC. London: Routledge, 2013.
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A critical analysis of how China historians have represented Chinese history of the Mao and post-Mao era. Vukovich questions scholars’ dominant dismissive attitude toward the revolutionary period. The author argues that the dominant analyses of Maoist and post-Maoist history are simplistic, ethnocentric, and ideologically biased.
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Zhou Ning (周宁). Tianchao yaoyuan: Xifang de Zhongguo xingxiang yanjiu (天朝遥远: 西方的中国形象研究). Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2006.
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An account of seven centuries of Western images of China and the way Western culture and society has been mirrored in these evolving images. The author argues that 1750 is a watershed that determines the evolution of Western perceptions of China from a utopian view to an ideologically biased approach.
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Zhu Yaowei (朱耀偉). Hou Dongfang zhuyi: Zhong-Xi wenhua piping lunshu celue (後東方主義：中西文化批評論述策略). Taipei: Luotuo, 1994.
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This book examines the evolving construction of the image of China in the contemporary world and discusses how critical theory has affected this construction from Foucault, Derrida, or Said to China scholars like Du Weiming (Tu Wei-ming), Zhang Longxi, or Perry Link. Zhu advocates for the need for rebuilding the image of China from an open and pluralistic “post-Orientalist” perspective.
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Canonical Sources of Orientalism

Historically the main source of Orientalist representations of China has been written texts. Canonical Orientalist literature, which constituted the empirical basis for Said’s Orientalism, has usually dealt with other regions and cultures of the “Orient” more than China, but there is also an array of works that in the 19th and 20th centuries have recreated Chinese culture in an Orientalist mood. These works could be considered the canonical sources of China Orientalism. The following list, which is far from being exhaustive, is divided into general Orientalist texts––including both essays and fiction––and translations. Academic analysis of these and other works––including publications of the second half of the 20th century––are commented on the section Western Literature and Orientalism.

Orientalist Texts

Since medieval times, China has had a visible presence in Western culture. China had been a region of marvels and wonders, an image that was refined and made more sophisticated by sinophile approaches in early European modernity. Imperial culture dramatically transformed that vision. The Euro-American position in the 19th and early 20th centuries was not homogeneous, but there was a common approach that established a radical––epistemological and ontological––distinction between the West and China. To cite a few paradigmatic works written in the main European languages, Chambers 1772, Segalen 1922, and Wilhelm 1925 provided a nuanced positive image of Chinese culture for their audiences. On the other hand, Giles 1911 maintained a much more critical stance, while Gaspar 1887 and Rohmer 1913 constructed a discourse that depicted China as an extremely negative counterpart of the West. Puccini 1926 epitomizes the exoticization of the East in his operas, while Weber 1989, first published in 1913, uses a culturalist approach to analyze Chinese society in a more academic way.

Chambers, William. A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening. London: W. Griffin, 1772.
DOI: 10.5962/bhl.title.63968Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Antedating the canonical definition of Orientalism as a by-product of the colonial enterprise, Chambers’s work is a prominent example of the important role that chinoiserie played in the European imperial representation of China and reflects the fascination and the need for the Chinese exotic in 18th-century European societies.
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Gaspar, Enrique. El Anacronopete; Viaje a China; Metempsicosis. Barcelona: Daniel Cortezo, 1887.
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This volume by the Spanish playwright and diplomat Enrique Gaspar contains an elaborate and exhaustive set of archetypical representations of Chinese society and culture. The representational strategies used by the author are the best example of Spanish 19th-century Orientalism.
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Giles, Herbert Allen. The Civilization of China. New York: H. Holt, 1911.
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One of the most important representatives of Western imperialism in China, Giles was a diplomat, translator, sinologist, and professor who wrote a number of works on Chinese culture and language, The Civilization of China being one of the best examples of the early 20th-century critical Orientalist representation of the Chinese.
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Puccini, Giacomo. Turandot. Milan: Scala de Milan, 1926.
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Based on a play by Carlo Gozzi and completed by Franco Alfano, Turandot is the most famous opera set in China and one of the most outstanding Orientalist operas. This play epitomizes the devices of exoticization of the Chinese Other common in Western popular culture in the early 20th century.
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Rohmer, Sax. The Mystery of Doctor Fu Manchu. London: Allan Wingate, 1913.
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Published in the United States as The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, this is the first book of the remarkably Orientalist Fu-Manchu series. It echoes the racist logic of the yellow peril of that period.
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Segalen, Victor. René Leys. Paris: Georges Crès et Cie, 1922.
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Segalen rejected colonialism and is considered the anti–Pierre Loti (an archetypical French Orientalist). However, his work reflects a distinctive Orientalist fascination with a reified legendary China. This posthumous novel set in late-Qing Beijing is an example of this approach.
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Weber, Max. Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus und Taoismus: Schriften 1915–1920. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr, 1989.
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Weber’s great contribution to sinology, originally published in German in 1913, tries to answer why China did not develop capitalism and points to cultural and ideological differences between China and the West as the basis for his arguments, with an epistemological approach akin to Said’s definition of Orientalism. English translation by Hans H. Gerth: The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (New York: Macmillan, 1964).
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Wilhelm, Richard. Die Seele Chinas. Berlin: Reimar Hobbing, 1925.
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English translation by John Holroyd Reece: The Soul of China (Maple Shade, NJ: Lethe Press, 2005). Missionary, translator, and sinologist, Wilhelm is the author of an array of influential works on Chinese philosophy and contributor to the idea of “Oriental wisdom.” In his Soul of China he rendered his vision of the Chinese world, from politics to religion and his contacts with Chinese esoteric traditions.
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Translations

Translations played an important role in the construction of the Western image of China and the circulation of Orientalist representations. Walter 1867, Klabund 1929, Pound 1915, and Pessanha 1931 are examples of liberal adaptations of classical literature which rendered an almost idealistic and reifying representation of Chinese culture. Pauthier 1858 and Wilhelm 1967 represent a different type of philologically more accurate translations, which nevertheless similarly contributed to the circulation of essentialist ideas about China and its way of thought.

Klabund. The Circle of Chalk. Translated by James Laver. London: Heinemann, 1929.
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An example of the re-adaptation of the image of China in Europe, this work is a very liberal version of Stanislas Julien’s translation of a Yuan drama. The version by Klabund (Alfred Henschke) circulated profusely and was adapted into an opera by Alexander von Zemlinsky and into a short story and a play by Bertolt Brecht. Originally published as Der Kreidekreis: Spiel in 5 Akten nach dem Chinesischen. Vienna: Phaidon-Verlag, 1929.
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Pauthier, Guillaume. Confucius et Mencius. Les Quatre Livrès fe Philosophie Morale et Politique de la Chine. Paris: Charpentier, 1858.
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Pauthier’s books on Chinese culture and history and his translations of classical literature, which also include the Laozi and the Sanzijing, were well-acclaimed and circulated in many European countries, becoming an important influence on the European construction of an orientalized representation of China.
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Pessanha, Camilo. Oito Elegias Chinesas. Lisbon: Edições Descobrimento, 1931.
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Originally published in 1914 in the Macanese journal O Progresso, this collection of Ming poems is one of the most representative works of Pessanha, a Portuguese poet and sinologist who admired and praised Chinese culture in his characteristically Orientalist works.
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Pound, Ezra. Cathay. London: Elkin Mathews, 1915.
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This collection of translations of Chinese classical poems by the modernist American poet Ezra Pound, who never studied Chinese, is one of the most renowned generators of representations of Chinese culture in the early 20th century. Pound’s image of a refined and superior China has been associated with Orientalism despite its optimistic stance.
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Walter, Judith. Le Livre de Jade. Paris: A Lemerre, 1867.
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This is a collection of renditions of Chinese poetry translated into French by Judith Gauthier, whose identity in the original edition was concealed under a pseudonym. Gauthier’s translations are loosely inspired by the original Chinese poems, but it strongly influenced European ideas about Chinese poetry.
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Wilhelm, Richard. English Translation by Cary F. Baynes: The I-Ching or Book of Changes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.
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This renowned and authoritative translation of the classical Yijing was re-versioned into a handful of European languages and contributed to the circulation of the idea of an esoteric Chinese tradition that was reinterpreted in nuanced ways throughout the Western world. Originally published as I Ging. Das Buch der Wandlungen (Jena, Germany: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1924).
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Bibliographies and Dictionaries

This section provides references on bibliographical and biographical accounts of the development of pioneering sinology. Academic Orientalists of the 19th century and early 20th-century sinologists are frequently a source of Orientalist representations, despite their academic contributions to the definition of the China field of study. Actually, while in Anglophone academic circles “sinology” is frequently considered a negative term that refers to an outdated approach to Chinese studies, in several European academies it still has a neutral connotation (the uses of the term “sinology” are commented in the section Academia and Orientalism). Among bibliographical works on classical sinology and academic Orientalism, Cordier 1904–1908 is an amazing account of works in European languages. Yuan 1958 is a continuation of Cordier’s work up to the 1950s. Skachkov 1932 is a comprehensive bibliography of Russian works on China. Lust 1964 provides a catalogue of articles in periodicals from 1920 to 1955. On the other hand, biographical data on European Orientalists and pioneering sinologists may be found in Honey 2001, Pouillon 2008, and Schmidt-Glintzer 2007.

Cordier, Henri. Bibliotheca sinica: Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à l’Empire chinois. Paris: E. Leroux, 1904–1908.
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A classical bibliographical account of about seventy thousand works on China published in European languages up to about 1920. A Supplement was published in 1924 (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthne, 1924)
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Honey, David B. Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philosophy. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 2001.
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A well-documented account of the history of sinology through its protagonists, from the Jesuit missionaries to the French, German, or English sinologists, and to the founding of area studies. Following a chronological and national structure, Honey centers his survey on specialists and translators of Chinese classics.
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Lust, John. Index Sinicus: A Catalogue of Articles Relating to China in Periodicals and Other Collective Publications, 1920–1955. Cambridge, UK: W. Heffer, 1964.
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Periodicals have been a consistent source of ethnocentric approaches to non–European American societies. As a consequence, this inventory of articles is a useful tool to locate Orientalist representations of China for the period 1920–1955.
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Pouillon, François, ed. Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française. Paris: Karthala Éditions, 2008.
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A dictionary of French academic Orientalists, a part of whom are sinologists.
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Schmidt-Glintzer, Helwig. Sinologie und das Interesse an China. Mainz, Germany: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 2007.
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A very concise but comprehensive overview of the development of sinological studies in Germany. The author discusses the meaning of sinology and argues that it is still a valid concept for the contemporary academy.
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Skachkov, Peter E. Bibliografiya Kitaya. Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoye sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoye izdatel’stvo, 1932.
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An account of Russian bibliography on China for the period 1730–1930 which includes examples of academic Orientalism.
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Yuan, T’ung-li. China in Western Literature: A Continuation of Cordier’s Bibliotheca Sinica. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958.
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A continuation of Cordier’s Biblioteca for the period 1921–1957.
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Journals

Asian studies journals occasionally include articles dedicated to the critical analysis of the question of Orientalism. But there are no journals exclusively devoted to China Orientalism. However, examples of Orientalist approaches to all things Chinese can be found in the first stages of historical journals of sinology––this is not to imply that these journals maintain an Orientalist stance nowadays. T’oung Pao, the Journal asiatique and the Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient are published in French; The Journal of the American Oriental Society, the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society are published in English; Monumenta Serica is mainly published in English, although articles in German and other European languages are frequent; while the Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenlanchen gesellschaft is published in German.

Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient. 1901–.
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Founded in 1901, it had an important Chinese component, including articles with biased representations of China, throughout the first half of the 20th century.
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 1917–.
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Founded in 1917, the presence of Chinese materials and colonial representations of China is frequent, mainly in the first half of the 20th century.
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Journal asiatique. 1822–.
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Founded in 1822, it has published articles on Chinese affairs since its very foundation. Colonial and Orientalist visions of the Chinese world are frequent until the first decades of the 20th century.
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Journal of the American Oriental Society. 1843–.
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Founded in 1843, is the earliest American periodical devoted to Oriental studies. Sinological articles have appeared irregularly in several periods.
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Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1901–1948.
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Founded in 1858 as Journal of the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society, it was a sinology journal published in a colonial entrepôt.
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Monumenta Serica. 1935–.
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Founded in 1935 by the Catholic Society of the Divine Word, it has been mainly dedicated to sinology since its creation.
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T’oung Pao. 1890–.
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Originally named T’oung Pao ou Archives pour servir à l’étude de l’histoire, des langues, la geographie et l’ethnographie de l’Asie Orientale (Chine, Japon, Corée, Indo-Chine, Asie Centrale et Malaisie), this prestigious journal published the works of several pioneering sinologists of the end of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.
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Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlanchen Gesellschaft. 1847–.
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Founded in 1847, the presence of China in the Journal of the German Oriental Society is scarce.
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Academia and Orientalism

“Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism,” defined Said (Orientalism, 1978, p. 2). China scholars of the 19th century were frequently known as “Orientalists” or “sinologists.” In the 20th century the latter term overcame the former. Archetypical sinologists were China experts with a solid knowledge of the Chinese language, literature, and history. Most of them were also pieces of the imperial machinery, as they had been missionaries or diplomats, if not both, in China, and as such they had become interested in Chinese culture. After the Second World War, a new term became popular, mainly in the Anglophone world, “area studies,” and subsequently notions such as “China expert” or “China watcher” substituted that of “sinologist” in several academic circles. Since their inception, area studies have been connected to Cold War interests, and therefore to the relationship between power and knowledge. Only a few works have been published examining the relation between classical sinology and the imperial discourse of Orientalism. Chan 2009 provides a critical evaluation of pioneering sinology and its ethnocentric interpretation of Chinese culture. Bo 2006 briefly analyzes Japanese sinology at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Honey 2001 provides a biographical account of the most important classical sinologists. Wang 2008 examines James Legge’s translations and his contribution to the imperial endeavor from a postcolonial theoretical framework. The transition from pioneering sinology to more professionalized Chinese studies and the subsequent crisis of area studies have generated debates and problematized the epistemological and theoretical basis of sinology and China studies. De Pee 2012 describes this evolution and crisis in Song studies in the United States, while Louie 2003 analyzes the same phenomena in Chinese literature studies in Australia. Palat 2000 offers a critical appraisal of Asian studies and its shortcomings. Dirlik 2005 evaluates the alternatives to area studies and unveils its contradictions and deficiencies.

Bo Gong (泊功). “Qianlun jindai Riben hanxue yu dui Zhongguo de Dongfangxue huayu” (浅论近代日本汉学与对中国的东方学话语). Shenzhen daxue xuebao 5 (2006): 15–22.
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This article explores how Japanese views of China evolved from the Meiji period and the strengthening and modernization of Japan. The author argues that Japanese sinologists adopted an Orientalist discourse that privileged their own nation and supported the expansionist ideas of Japanese imperialism.
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Chan, Adrian. Orientalism in Sinology. Palo Alto, CA: Academica Press, 2009.
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A study of the Orientalist dimension of classical sinology, from the first Christian missionaries who attempted to introduce Christian categories in the analysis of Chinese philosophy to the modern sinologists that searched Chinese history for cultural and social developments which were genuinely European.
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De Pee, Christian. “Cycles of Cathay: Sinology, Philology, and Histories of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) in the United States.” Fragments: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Ancient and Medieval Pasts 2 (2012).
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This article examines the evolution of Song studies in the United States, which have followed a different path than European sinology, based on the social sciences but with a renewed attention to textual and discursive approaches in recent years.
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Dirlik, Arif. “Asia Pacific Studies in an Age of Global Modernity.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6 (2005): 158–170.
DOI: 10.1080/14649370500065870Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of the crisis of area studies in the globalized world, identifying contemporary alternatives and the shortcomings and contradictions of these alternatives. The author argues that those contradictions facilitate different approaches and challenge power structures, thus allowing a more critical understanding of Asia Pacific studies.
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Honey, David B. Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philosophy. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 2001.
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An approximation to the history of sinology, from the foundation of the Jesuit mission up to the middle of the 20th century, this book is a good introduction to the evolution of classical sinology and the work of the most eminent classical sinologues.
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Louie, Kam. “From Orientalists to Bent Bananas: Australasian Research in Chinese Literature in the Last 50 Years.” Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 100 (2003): 50–60.
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This article examines the evolution of Chinese studies in Australia, focusing on literature scholars. It describes the evolution from Orientalism––that is, classical philological sinology—to area studies, and to modern critical literary studies, and the debates and dilemmas these transitions have generated.
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Palat, Ravi Arvind. “Beyond Orientalism: Decolonizing Asian Studies.” Development and society 29 (2000): 105–135.
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This highly critical article provides a description of Asian studies and its shortcomings. The author considers that Asian studies have been discriminatory, institutionalized, narrow-minded, and essentialist, and that in the globalized world they require a broader comparative approach.
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Wang, Hui. Translating Chinese Classics in a Colonial Context: James Legge and His Two Versions of the Zhongyong. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2008.
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Wang Hui critically applies Said and postcolonial studies ideas in this study of Legge’s Confucian translations and analyzes the role of these translations in the process of British empire-building. Chapter 1 is particularly useful as it examines the significance of Orientalism to China studies.
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Self-Orientalism

One of the most reasonable critiques to Said refers to the lack of agency of the Orientals in his Orientalism. Orientals seem to appear as the passive subjects of an Orientalism which is constructed and performed only by the West. Among China scholars, Dirlik 1996 (cited under Chinese History and Orientalism) claimed that Asians were active agents in the construction of the Orient, in a process known as “self-Orientalism” which is still alive. Self-Orientalism is present in very diverse phenomena. Tong 2000 analyzes how the Chinese intellectuals of the New Culture movement adopted Orientalist representations of the Chinese language constructed by Westerners and merged it with their nationalist principles. Yang 2011 examines the process of self-Orientalization of religiosity in modern China among anti-colonial elites. Mao 2009 focuses attention on the ethnocentric discourse implicit in contemporary advertising in China. Liu and Zhang 2010 studies the self-Orientalist discourse used by the Chinese media when addressing the popular Yao Ming phenomenon. Yan and Almeida Santos 2009 explores tourism discourse in China and concludes that it is extremely self-Orientalist. Schein 1997 analyzes the internal Orientalism that is at stake in the construction of Chinese minorities. Beltrán Antolín 2008 examines the elements that take place in cross-cultural negotiations in East Asia, such as self-Orientalism and exoticism.

Beltrán Antolín, Joaquín. “Orientalismo, autoorientalismo e interculturalidad de Asia Oriental.” In Nuevas Perspectivas de Investigación Sobre Asia Pacífico. Edited by Pedro San Ginés, 257–273. Granada, Spain: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2008.
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One of the few contributions to the question of Orientalism and Chinese studies in Spanish. The author centers his analysis on the tensions inherent in the debates over exoticism, self-orientalism, authenticity, and interculturality and the production of knowledge of the other in the contemporary world.
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Liu Yaohui 刘耀辉, and Zhang Xuan 张璇. “Yao Ming de yinying: ‘ziwo dongfang zhuyi’ de Zhongguo meijie huayu shengchan—Jiyu’Zhongguo qingnian bao’ dui Yao Ming de baodao” (姚明的阴影:“自我东方主义”的中国媒介话语生产—基于《中国青年报》对姚明的报道). Guoji xinwenjie 国际新闻界 5 (2010): 56–62.
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Addressing a popular phenomenon like the NBA player Yao Ming as a case study, this article examines the way the discourse of self-Orientalism is adopted in the Chinese media. The authors analyze the representational mechanisms used in Chinese media and conclude that this type of discourse must be overcome.
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Mao, Sihui. “Translating the Other: Discursive Contradictions and New Orientalism in Contemporary Advertising in China.” The Translator 15 (2009): 261–282.
DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2009.10799281Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article examines how the negotiation between Self and Other is articulated in advertising in China and the cultural translation that it encompasses. Using Chinese real-estate advertising as a case study, the author emphasizes the internalized ethnocentrism and inferiority complex that constitutes the Orientalist discourse of advertising in contemporary China.
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Schein, Louisa. “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China.” Modern China 23 (1997): 69–98.
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This article addresses the topic of the fascination of cosmopolitan Chinese with the exoticized minorities. According to the author, this internal Orientalism is constructed through an asymmetry between feminized rural minorities and masculinized urban observers, an asymmetry that is explored in detail in this article.
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Tong, Qing Sheng. “Inventing China: The Use of Orientalist Views on the Chinese Language.” Interventions 2 (2000): 6–20.
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An account of the history and circulation of Western ideas about the Chinese language from the 17th to the 20th century, when the Orientalist approach to the Chinese language is adopted in China and combined with the nationalistic ideas of the May Fourth Movement.
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Yan, Grace, and Carla Almeida Santos. “‘China Forever’: Tourism Discourse and Self-Orientalism.” Annals of Tourism Research 36 (2009): 295–315.
DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2009.01.003Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article analyzes how China has represented herself in tourism discourse. The authors argue that touristic practices in China conform to a self-Orientalist discourse that reinvents and markets Chinese identities through a process of feminization and mythification of China and subjugating China to the authority of the West.
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Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. “Postcoloniality and Religiosity in Modern China. The Disenchantments of Sovereignty.” Theory, Culture & Society 28 (2011): 3–44.
DOI: 10.1177/0263276410396915Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author argues that nationalist and anticolonial elites in China have unconsciously taken the discourse of Orientalism as its own and analyzes the effects that this process of self-Orientalization has had upon religiosity in modern China.
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Debates and Reactions to Orientalism

The publication of Orientalism in 1978 did not produce an immediate reaction among China scholars. Very few applauded Said’s ideas and the majority considered that the critique of Orientalism did not affect Chinese studies. The debates began at the end of the 1980s in the West and in the 1990s in China, but generally speaking they were of limited scope and consequence. Only in parallel with the profound and lasting methodological and epistemological changes that the China field experienced in the same decades, did China scholars dedicate an increasing attention to the discursive dimension of their own research, including the question of Orientalism.

Debates about Orientalism

China scholars’ reactions to the claims of Orientalism have gone from indifference to critical acceptance, to refusal and to complete rejection of the authority of Said’s arguments. Liu and Tang 1993 provides a general overview of Chinese intellectual discussions about critical topics in cultural theory. Hägerdal 1997 (cited under General Overviews) reviews the reactions to Said’s ideas and the debates they aroused among Western China scholars, while Barmé 2000 and Zhang 2009 analyze the discussions that took place in China after the introduction of Said’s ideas in the 1990s. Zhang 1993 was one of the introducers of Said’s thesis into China and one of the contributors to those debates. Saussy 2001 makes use of Saidian reflections in his analyses of the Western construction of China and the debates on “post-studies” in China. Ryckmans 1984 represents one of the first refutations of the applicability of the Saidian critique to Chinese studies. Huang 1998 considers that Said’s ideas are not convincing and nonfunctional when applied to the study of Chinese history.

Barmé, Geremie R. In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
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The chapter “To Screw Foreigners Is Patriotic” (pp. 255–280) offers an analysis of the intellectual debates about nationalism that took place in China at the end of the 20th century. According to Barmé, among other currents Orientalism and postcolonial theory were well received and frequently used to reinforce nationalist and conservative ideas and reject Western intellectual influences.
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Huang, Philip C. C. “Theory and the Study of Modern Chinese History: Four Traps and a Question.” Modern China 24 (1998): 183–208.
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The article identifies four theoretical traps that have influenced China historians, cultural studies and Said being one of them. Huang considers that Orientalism made some telling points but is not always convincing, and concludes that it is a type of reflexive criticism that cannot take the place of history.
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Liu, Kang, and Xiaobing Tang, eds. Politics, Ideology and Literary Discourse in Modern China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822381846Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Despite not being directly concerned with Said’s Orientalism, this edited volume includes reflections by outstanding China scholars on related topics such as discourse, representation, modernity and postmodernity, subjectivity, postcolonial studies or cultural theory, applied to a wide range of case studies, mainly from the literary field.
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Ryckmans, Pierre. “Orientalism and Sinology.” Asian Studies Review 7 (1984): 18–20.
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One of the earliest remarkable responses to Orientalism from a China scholar. Highly critical and unfavorable, Ryckmans (Simon Leys) refutes Said’s criticisms of area studies and argues that serious Chinese studies––which must be defined in linguistic and not geographical terms––have very little to do with Orientalist approaches.
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Saussy, Haun. Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001.
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An analysis of China as an object of Western knowledge––from Ricci to Foucault or Kristeva––Said’s ideas have an important presence in this collection of essays that from a critical perspective introduces considerations on comparativism, translation, mediation, politics, or postmodernism in China.
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Zhang Kuan (张宽). “OuMeiren yanzhong de ‘feiwo zulei’” (欧美人眼中的“非我族类). Dushu (September 1993): 3–9.
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A pioneering essay, one of the first published in China introducing Said’s work, which generated intense discussions among Chinese intellectuals. Applying Saidian methodology, the author argues that Chinese Occidentalism has misrepresented the West, giving at times both an idealized and negative view of the West.
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Zhang Kuan (张宽). “The Dilemma of Postcolonial Criticism in Contemporary China.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 40 (2009): 143–159.
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A concise and clear review of the debates on postcolonial criticism spurred in China since the 1990s, of which the author has been an active contributor. The essay analyzes in particular the debate between Chinese Occidentalism and Western Orientalism and the relationship between postcolonial scholars and institutionalized discourses in China.
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Chinese Responses to Orientalism

Chinese scholars have posed the question of Occidentalism as an inversion of Orientalism: how the Chinese constructed the idea of the West. Zhang 1993 (cited under Debates about Orientalism) already examined Chinese Occidentalism and criticized its distorting stance. The seminal work Chen 2002 explored two different meanings of Occidentalism in post-Mao China: an official negative characterization of the West, and a non-official praise of the West that acts as a critique of government oppression. Wang 1997 proposed cultural dialogue for overcoming the opposition between Orientalism and Occidentalism. Cheung 1998 applies the ideas of Occidentalism to the analysis of the translation of Western literature into Chinese at the beginning of the 20th century. From a very different perspective, Gu 2010 and Gu 2012 propose an alternative to Orientalism: to overcome the biased ethnocentric discourse of China scholars, which he defines with the neologism “Sinologism,” it is necessary to develop a depoliticized hermeneutics of Chinese culture.

Chen, Xiaomei. Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
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Originally published in 1997, this seminal work states that Western culture has been depicted favorably in nonofficial discourses in China. The author argues that this form of Occidentalism has a positive political and ideological effect, as it is a counter-discourse with a liberating effect in a totalitarian society.
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Cheung, Martha P. Y. “The Discourse of Occidentalism? Wei Yi and Lin Shu’s Treatment of Religious Material in Their Translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” In Translation and Creation. Readings of Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840–1918. Edited by David Pollard, 127–150. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1998.
DOI: 10.1075/btl.25Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
After a comparative study of the treatment of religious material in Lin Shu’s and Wei Yi’s joint translation of Stowe’s novel, this chapter applies the analytical framework of Orientalism and Occidentalism to conclude that this translation is an example of Occidentalism in a period of anti-imperialist stance in China.
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Gu Mingdong (顾明栋). “Hanxue yu Hanxue zhuyi: Zhongguo yanjiu zhi pipan” (汉学与汉学主义:中国研究之批判). Nanjing daxue xuebao 1 (2010): 79–96.
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This article explores the epistemology and methodology used in Western China studies to approach Chinese culture. The author’s claim is to overcome that approach, which Gu defines with the term “Sinologism” and describes as remarkably ethnocentric and Orientalist.
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Gu Mingdong (顾明栋). Sinologism: An Alternative to Orientalism and Postcolonialism. London: Routledge, 2012.
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The author considers that Orientalism is not suitable for China because China was never colonized. Gu defines “Sinologism” as the biased discourse of Western and Chinese scholars, and claims for an hermeneutic approach to Chinese culture that should aim for the de-politicization of the field to overcome that discourse.
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Wang, Ning. “Orientalism versus Occidentalism?” New Literary History 28 (1997): 57–67.
DOI: 10.1353/nlh.1997.0013Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article, written without taking into account Chen Xiaomei’s book, refuses to confront Orientalism to Occidentalism and advocates a mature cultural dialogue.
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Chinese History and Orientalism

China historians have traditionally been reluctant to accept Said’s conclusions and apply a postcolonial critique to their research. However, the narrative of Chinese history has evolved dramatically since the 1980s. Old approaches have been overcome and history is conceived in a more dynamic way. Liu 2004 provides a postcolonial analysis of the discursive dimension of British imperial actions in China. Goebel 1995 examines Herder’s Orientalist ideas on the history of China. Martínez-Robles 2008 provides a general account of the evolution of Western ideas on the history of China and discusses the debates and different perspectives of historians in the contemporary world. Cohen 2010 analyzes the different paradigms that historians have used to write about Chinese history and claims for a China-centered history of China. Ruskola 2013 analyzes the historical representations of Chinese law in the United States from the perspective of the discourse of Orientalism. Dirlik 1996 criticizes Said’s ignorance of the Oriental’s agency and introduces the notion of self-Orientalism into the analysis of the modern history of China. Vukovich 2013 (cited under General Overviews) problematizes the work of contemporary China historians for being too simplistic and ideologically biased.

Cohen, Paul A. Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
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A detailed survey of the different approaches American China historians have applied to the study of Chinese history, originally published in 1984. The last chapter introduces Cohen’s influential claim for a China-centered history of China, which has been criticized by several scholars for being a new form of contemporary Orientalism.
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Dirlik, Arif. “Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism.” History and Theory 35 (1996): 96–118.
DOI: 10.2307/2505446Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
After a concise presentation of Said’s critique, this article examines its application to the modern history of China and argues that Said missed the point when he conceived the Oriental Other as a completely passive recipient of the colonial discourse. In support of this idea, the author analyzes modern and contemporary forms of self-Orientalism in China.
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Goebel, Rolf J. “China as an Embalmed Mummy: Herder’s Orientalist Poetics.” South Atlantic Review 60 (1995): 111–129.
DOI: 10.2307/3200716Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper analyzes the representation of Chinese history in Herder’s thought. China is seen as a stagnant and immobile empire and the construction of the Chinese people is colored by a strong Orientalist ethnocentrism.
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Liu, Lydia H. The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making. Cambridge, MA, and London: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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An analysis of diverse aspects of the discursive dimension of sovereignty that was at stake in the actions of the British empire in 19th-century Qing China. In a postcolonial approach that takes Said’s ideas for granted, Liu offers a semiotical analysis of imperialism, unequal treaties, international law, gift exchange or imperial linguistics.
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Martínez-Robles, David. “The Western Representation of Modern China: Orientalism, Culturalism and Historiographical Criticism.” Digithum 10 (2008): 7–16.
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This article examines the intellectual strategies developed in the West to represent Chinese history and culture, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary world.
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Ruskola, Teemu. Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674075764Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comparative study of historical perceptions of US and Chinese law and the social and geopolitical consequences of these views. The author applies Said’s theoretical framework to analyze Western historical and contemporary representations of the law in China, a country usually conceived as lawless in American colonial thought.
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Studies on Western Images of China and Orientalism

Western images of China have evolved throughout history, from mythic depictions of Chinese strength and wealth to philosophical constructions about the rationality of the Chinese system of government, to romantic approaches to Chinese art and literature, to highly negative representations of Chinese social and cultural stagnation or to exoticized descriptions of Chinese traditions. Derived from their interest in Western encounters with China, before the publication of Orientalism, China scholars had already provided accounts and critical analyses of Western perceptions of East Asia and China and the role China played in European imaginary. This tradition of studies has continued to the present, both in the form of comprehensive studies or of more particular analyses.

General Accounts

There are a number of general studies about Western perceptions of China and all things Chinese. Among them, Mackerras 1999 takes into consideration Said’s ideas about Orientalism to carry out one of the most comprehensive and balanced accounts of the history of Western images of China. Hung 2003 provides an analysis of how Orientalism has informed modern European approaches to China. Although somewhat outdated, Dawson 1967 is a classic and still stimulating work, while Spence 1998 is an attractive analysis of significant Western works about China. With a less comprehensive purpose and inspired by Dawson, Zheng 2013 provides a renewed perspective in its analyses of a number of very diverse topics. Other works are focused on the representations and perceptions in a particular country, as in the case of Schimmelpenninck van der Oye 2010, concerned with Russian images of the East, and Zhang 2011, which examines French perceptions.

Dawson, Raymond Stanley. The Chinese Chameleon: An Analysis of European Conceptions of Chinese Civilization. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
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One of the most classic analyses of European representations of China. Despite its important academic shortcomings, it is still a stimulating book for general audiences.
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Hung, Ho-Fung. “Orientalist Knowledge and Social Theories: China and the European Conceptions of East-West Differences from 1600 to 1900.” Sociological Theory 21 (2003): 254–280.
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9558.00188Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper argues that Western conceptions of China have been ambivalent and ideologically biased, oscillating between idealism and racism. According to Hung’s analysis, the reifying and reductionist discourse of Orientalism has reduced non-Western cultures to static and never-changing cultures.
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Mackerras, Colin. Western Images of China. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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With an approach greatly influenced by Said, this work is a panoramic review of the images of China in the West, from ancient times to the contemporary world, and from scholarly works to the media or to cinema.
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Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David. Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.
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An analysis of Russian images of Asia up to the Russian Revolution, with an important presence of China. The author’s argument is that Russian representations are remarkably different from those of Western countries, more nuanced and often sympathetic.
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Spence, Jonathan D. The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds. New York: Norton, 1998.
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Through an elegant analysis of forty-eight Western works aimed at general audiences, this book explores a selection of Western images of China, from the medieval era to the contemporary world.
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Wilson, Ming, and John Cayley, eds. Europe Studies China: Papers from an International Conference on the History of European Sinology. Taipei: Han-Shan Tang, 1995.
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This edited volume analyzes the history of Western perceptions of China and the history of sinology in Europe from very different perspectives and approaches.
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Zhang, Jinling. “Imaginer la Chine: Une histoire concise des perceptions françaises de la Chine.” Croisements. Revue francophone de sciences humaines d’Asie de l’Est 1 (2011): 57–82.
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A historical survey of French images of China. It argues that throughout history, from the Renaissance to the 20th century, China’s role in French intellectual history has been that of a cultural Other by which French society looked at herself.
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Zheng, Yangwen. The Chinese Chameleon Revisited. From the Jesuits to Zhang Yimou. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2013.
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This edited book aims to present a new and critical perspective on the study of Western perceptions of China. It is a collection of papers with very different contents, from the works of Catholic missionaries of the early Qing period, to the views of French intellectuals, and to Chinese contemporary cinema.
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China in Modern Europe

Apart from general overviews, there is a large number of works that deal with Western perceptions of China in particular periods or authors. Most of these focus on European modernity and the Enlightenment. A few have explored the precedents to that period: Phillips 2013 examines European representations before the imperial era and therefore before the crystallization of Orientalist discourse, Hsia 1998 studies the evolution of the images of China in European intellectual history in the 17th and 18th centuries, Scott 2003 examines the intellectual foundations of chinoserie and its representation of the Chinese Other, while Ellis 2006 analyzes two of the most influential treatises of early modern Europe, written in Spanish. Zhang 1988 examines from a general perspective modern conceptions of China in European philosophy and literature. Mungello 2012 analyzes the role of Jesuit missionaries in European ideas on China, and Ching and Oxtoby 1992 examines more particular aspects of those ideas. Rubiés 2005 focuses on the concept of “oriental despotism” understood as an intellectual mechanism to differentiate European politics and ethics from the oriental Other.

Ching, Julia, and Willard Gurdon Oxtoby. Discovering China: European Interpretations in the Enlightenment. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1992.
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A selection of articles dealing with China’s role in Enlightenment history and intellectual contacts between China and Europe in that period.
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Ellis, Robert Richmond. “The Middle Kingdom through Spanish Eyes: Depictions of China in the Writings of Juan González de Mendoza and Domingo Fernández Navarrete.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 83 (2006): 469–483.
DOI: 10.3828/bhs.83.6.2Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of the description of China in the two most important works written by Spanish missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. Ellis argues that their representations of the Chinese empire define proto-Orientalism, as both Mendoza and Navarrete produced discourses that privilege Europe over China.
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Hsia, Adrian. Chinesia: The European Construction of China in the Literature of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Tübingen, Germany: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1998.
DOI: 10.1515/9783110914894Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of Chinesia––the European construction of China in 17th and 18th century Europe—this work explores the historical development of the images of China in early modern Western intellectual history. Despite considering that Said’s premises can be applied to China, Hsia prefers to use the notion of “Sinism” more than “Orientalism” to indicate the study of Chinesia.
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Mungello, David E. The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.
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An account of the encounter of Christian and Chinese cultures in the modern period for the general reader. Mungello analyzes the actions of European missionaries and the acceptance and rejection of Christian culture in China, and European attitudes toward Chinese culture.
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Phillips, Kim M. Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
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A portrait of Western ideas and views of the Orient before the era of colonization and therefore before the crystallization of the discourse of Orientalism. The author argues that premodern ideas of Asia were not colored by ethnocentrism but approached Asian societies with a neutral, albeit not an admiring, attitude.
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Rubiés, Joan-Pau. “Oriental Despotism and European Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu.” Journal of Early Modern History 9 (2005): 1–2.
DOI: 10.1163/1570065054300275Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of how the concept of Oriental despotism became a core device for European intellectuals to approach the Oriental Other and to establish a neat distinction between European ethics and politics and the most powerful civilizations of Asia, China among them.
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Scott, Katie. “Playing Games with Otherness: Watteau’s Chinese Cabinet at the Château de la Muette.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 66 (2003): 189–248.
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Taking a series of paintings by Antoine de Watteau as a case study, this article examines the ideological mechanisms used for the construction of Otherness that were at stake in early 18th-century French chinoiserie and the role Chinese curio played in the formation of identities in proto-colonial Europe.
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Zhang, Longxi. “The Myth of the Other: China in the Eyes of the West.” Critical Inquiry (1988): 108–131.
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A coherent analysis of the construction of the Other in Western philosophy and literature and the role China has played in it. The author looks over the writings of the Jesuits, the misconceptions of the Enlightenment, the chinoiserie phenomenon, and 17th-century idealization or the critical turn of the 18th century.
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Western Literature and Orientalism

Literature studies has been the academic discipline most permeable to the critique of Orientalism and postcolonial theory, and consequently it has produced a significant number of studies about China and the question of Orientalism. There is an array of studies analyzing representations of China in Western literature and culture, the role of China in the literary evolution of Europe, and the representational strategies used to represent China in Orientalist literature.

19th-Century Orientalist Literature

Several scholars have stressed the importance of China in the making of Western culture in the 19th century. Yue 2009, Fiske 2011, and Kitson 2013 have examined the presence of China in particular facets of 19th-century British culture and have underlined the role played by Orientalist representations of Chinese otherness in that society. Other studies have centered on specific authors or countries: Girardot 2002 provides a detailed analysis of the figure of James Legge and his contribution to the foundation of British academic Orientalism; Ramos 2001 analyzes 19th-century Portuguese Orientalism; Torres-Pou 2013 turns its attention to Spanish Orientalism in that same period; while Pauline Yu (Yu 2007) examines Judith Gauthier’s renditions of Chinese poetry and her influence on the production of aesthetic images of Chinese culture all around Europe. These works as a whole provide a glimpse into the presence of Orientalist images of China in Western culture and how these representations contributed to the definition of cultural identities in 19th-century Europe.

Fiske, Shanyn. “Orientalism Reconsidered: China and the Chinese in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Victorian Studies.” Literature Compass 8 (2011): 214–226.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00788.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An outline of the presence of China in 19th-century British life and literature. Due to the dominant Orientalist discourse, British attitudes toward China are largely negative and frequently xenophobic, and the literature of the time reflects that approach.
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Girardot, Norman J. The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge’s Oriental Pilgrimage. London: University of California Press, 2002.
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This monumental book centered on the figure of the missionary, sinologist, and translator James Legge and grounded in an accomplished theoretical background depicts with detail the beginning of British academic Orientalism and of sinological comparative religious studies, to which Legge is a major contributor.
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Kitson, Peter J. Forging Romantic China: Sino-British Cultural Exchange 1760–1840. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781107053809Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This book provides a picture of the construction of British knowledge of China in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and the relation between romantic literature and the imperial enterprise.
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Ramos, Manuela Delgado Leão. António Feijó e Camilo Pessanha no panorama do orientalismo português. Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2001.
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This book examines the works of 19th-century Portuguese Orientalists in Macao, their representations of China, and the establishment of Portuguese sinological studies. The last sections are dedicated to the works of Feijó and Pesanha, two of the most prolific Portuguese Orientalists.
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Torres-Pou, Joan. Asia en la España del siglo XIX: literatos, viajeros, intelectuales y diplomáticos ante Oriente. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2013.
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An overview of 19th-century Spanish Orientalism that demonstrates that Spain was not an exception in its representations of the Chinese Other. Even so, the author argues that Said’s theoretical framework does not completely adapt to Spanish Orientalist production.
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Yu, Pauline. “Travels of a Culture: Chinese Poetry and the European Imagination.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 151 (2007): 218–229.
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An analysis of the popular translations of Chinese poetry rendered by Judith Gauthier in her Livre du Jade and the influence this work had all around Europe.
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Yue, Isaac. “Missionaries (Mis-)representing China: Orientalism, Religion, and the Conceptualization of Victorian Cultural Identity.” Victorian Literature and Culture 37 (2009): 1–10.
DOI: 10.1017/S1060150309090019Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article explores a series of accounts by British missionaries in 19th-century China and seeks to demonstrate the fundamental role the institutionalized forms of Orientalism and Christianity had in the definition of Victorian culture and identity.
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Early 20th-century Western Literature

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Western representations of China were colored by the intellectual transformations of that period, mainly the development of modernist tastes and the racialization of the discourse of the Other. Contemporary studies reflect this evolution. Qian 1995 explores the interactions between Orientalism and Modernism, a connection that Hayot (1999) addresses from a different perspective with Pound’s Cathay as a case study. Goebel 1993 explores the traces of Orientalism in Dittmar and Kafka’s divergent works. Yu 2004 illustrates that the modernist demand for exoticism spurred the emergence not only of Asian motives but also of Asian individuals in modernist literature, as exemplified by the ephemeral success of the Philippine poet Garcia Villa. Nishihara 2005 provides the complementary perspective of Tanizaki’s Orientalist representation of China in the context of Japanese expansionism. On the other hand, Shih 2009 and Rzepka 2007 explore two divergent but complementary stereotypes of the Chinese in Western popular literature through the character of Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan.

Goebel, Rolf J. “Constructing Chinese History: Kafka’s and Dittmar’s Orientalist Discourse.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 108 (1993): 59–71.
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This article analyzes Dittmar’s typically Orientalist travelogue “In New China” and Kafka’s antithetical story “Constructing the Great Wall of China.” The author argues that despite their differences, both texts are immersed in the same ideological network of the discourse of Orientalism.
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Hayot, Eric. “Critical Dreams: Orientalism, Modernism, and the Meaning of Pound’s China.” Twentieth Century Literature 45 (1999): 511–533.
DOI: 10.2307/441950Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Hayot examines Pound’s Cathay and how it has been interpreted as a translation of Chinese poetry or a work of American literature and its relation to Orientalist discourse.
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Nishihara Daisuke 西原大辅. Guqirun Yilang yu dongfang zhuyi: Dazheng Riben de Zhongguo huanxiang (谷崎润一郎与东方主义: 大正日本的中国幻想). Translated by Zhao Yi 赵怡. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2005.
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Chinese translation of谷崎潤一郎とオリエンタリズム: 大正日本の中国幻想, it examines the role that China played in the early works of the novelist Tanizaki Junichiro 谷崎潤一郎and the Orientalist discourse embedded in them.
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Qian, Zhaoming. Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.
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This book is an attempt to emphasize the importance of China in the construction of Anglo-American modernism, a question that according to Qian has been under-examined. Qian considers that Said’s theoretical framework is not satisfactory for analyzing Pound’s work.
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Rzepka, Charles J. “Race, Region, Rule: Genre and the Case of Charlie Chan.” PMLA 122 (2007): 1463–1481.
DOI: 10.1632/pmla.2007.122.5.1463Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper focuses on the stereotyping strategies used in Biggers’s first novel of the Charlie Chan series and in the influential movies based on this character. An alternative to the yellow peril, Chan’s figure is an example of the racial construction of the Chinese in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Shih, David. “The Color of Fu-Manchu: Orientalist Method in the Novels of Sax Rohmer.” Journal of Popular Culture 42 (2009): 304–317.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2009.00681.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper examines the representational strategies used in Rohmer’s first novels of the Fu Manchu series and how the ideas of the yellow peril are echoed in his work.
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Yu, Timothy. “‘The Hand of a Chinese Master’: Jose Garcia Villa and Modernist Orientalism.” MELUS 29 (2004): 41–59.
DOI: 10.2307/4141794Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article on one of the Philippines’ most important modern English-language poets argues that his short-lived fame in the United States was the result of the Orientalism inherent in modernist ideology, which assured Villa an ephemeral position in the US literary scene.
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China in Contemporary Western Literature

China scholars have also analyzed the Orientalist images of China provided by contemporary literature. Ha 2000 examines the production of representations of East Asia in the Orientalist work of four outstanding French authors. Hayot 2009 explores the writings of Pound, Brecht, and a group of French Maoist intellectuals to determine the role that China played on European culture. Wong 1995 identifies the literary production of Amy Tan and her definition of Chinese American identity as a by-product of Orientalism. Ouyang 2008 offers an overview of the derogative presence of Chinese in Australian 20th-century literature, while Kendall 2004 explores the Orientalist strategies used to construct an image of China in Australian travel writing from 1963 to 1972. López-Calvo 2008 examines the presence and the representations of China in Cuban culture and literature.

Ha, Marie-Paule. Figuring the East: Segalen, Malraux, Duras, and Barthes. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.
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Using an analytical framework rooted in postcolonial theory, this book examines the representations of East Asia that can be found in the works of four major representatives of French contemporary literature, among them Victor Segalen and André Malraux, who dedicated significant fictional books to China.
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Hayot, Eric R. J. Chinese Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel Quel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.
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A book on 20th-century Western understanding of China that focuses on Pound, Brecht, and the French Maoist intellectuals that assembled around the journal Tel Quel. Hayot’s aim is to analyze how Western culture is mirrored in its representations of China through these writers and their works.
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Kendall, Timothy. “Marco Polo, Orientalism and the Experience of China: Australian Travel Accounts of Mao’s Republic.” Asian Studies Review 28 (2004): 373–389.
DOI: 10.1080/10357820500034755Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article analyzes the way China was imagined in Australian travel writing produced from 1963 to 1972 and suggests that all these travelogues were framed following the principles of Orientalism.
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López-Calvo, Ignacio. Imaging the Chinese in Cuban Literature and Culture. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008.
DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813032405.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This book offers a detailed study of the presence of the Chinese in the history of Cuba and of the representations that the Chinese have produced on the island, its culture, and its literature. These representations evolved from xenophobia to Orientalism and to more realistic views of the Chinese.
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Ouyang, Yu. Chinese in Australian Fiction, 1888–1988. Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2008.
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This book examines ethnocentric approaches and Orientalist depictions of Chinese in Australian literature since the end of 19th century.
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Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. “‘Sugar Sisterhood’: Situating the Amy Tan Phenomenon.” In The Ethnic Canon: Histories, Institutions, and Interventions. Edited by David Palumbo-Liu, 174–210. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
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This chapter offers an analysis of the representational devices used in some of Amy Tan’s works to tackle Chinese American identity. Wong argues that Tan’s descriptions of Chinese culture are decidedly exotic and consequently framed in the discourse of Orientalism.
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China in Popular Culture

Aside from elite literature and culture, China has been the object of representations in all kinds of manifestations of mass and popular culture, from comics to opera, to art exhibitions and to TV series. In the last decades, scholars have begun to turn their attention to these kinds of manifestations. Barnes 2014 provides an account of British representations of the Cultural Revolution in museum exhibitions from the 1970s to the 2010s. Iwamura 2010 and Lee 1999 explore the presence of Chinese and Asians in American popular culture and the creation of stereotypes. Scott 2012 examines the popular Dr. Fu-Manchu novels and the representational strategies used by Sax Rohmer in the same. Leong 2005 explains the construction of “the China Mystique” in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s through the figures of Pearl Buck, Ann May Wong, and May-ling Soong. Liao 2003 analyzes the Orientalist images that 20th-century operas transmit, while Tuan 2011 examines the reified construction of Chineseness in Zhang Yimou’s version of Puccini’s Turandot.

Barnes, Amy Jane. Museum Representations of Maoist China: From Cultural Revolution to Commie Kitsch. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014.
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This book examines the contemporary representations of China in Britain during the Cultural Revolution, the impact of Chinese visual culture of the Cultural Revolution and its exhibition from 1975 to 2008, and the interpretation of the revolutionary period in several exhibitions which took place in Britain between 2009 and 2013
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Iwamura, Jane. Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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The image of the “Oriental Monk” in US visual media––newspapers, film, and television––is the basis of this book. The author analyzes the American construction of religious Oriental characters, among them the “eastern western” protagonist of the Kung Fu series, with references to other popular stereotyped Chinese characters.
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Lee, Robert G. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.
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This book analyzes six types of stereotyped representations of Asians––principally Chinese––in American popular culture from the mid-19th century to the second half of the 20th, and examines how these representations were constructed and the role they played in American society.
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Leong, Karen J. The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520244221.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This book analyzes the construction of the China mystique in the United States through the lives and experiences of three women in the 1930s and 1940s who achieved a high reputation as representatives of China and its culture.
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Liao Ping-hui (廖炳惠). “Dongfangxue de yinxiang zhuanzhe.” (東方學的音響轉折). Qinghua xuebao (Tsinghua xuebao) 清华学报 33 (2003): 341–364.
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This article applies Said’s theoretical framework to the interpretation of two Western operas set in China by Puccini and Weir. After a detailed analysis of Orientalism, its critics, and Said’s responses, the author argues that these operas reflect a cultural turn in Western representations of China.
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Scott, David. “Rohmer’s ‘Orient’–Pulp Orientalism?” Archiv orientální 80 (2012): 1–27.
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This article addresses the Orientalist production of Sax Rohmer, including the series dedicated to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and evaluates whether it matches the Saidian notion of Orientalism.
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Tuan, Iris Hsin-chun. “Zhang Yimou’s Turandot in Taiwan: Intercultural Spectacle, Aesthetic of Excess, and Cross-Strait Sensibility.” Theatre Topics 21 (2011): 175–183.
DOI: 10.1353/tt.2011.0023Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of Zhang Yimou’s essentialized construction of Chineseness through the staging of Puccini’s Orientalist Turandot in Taiwan.
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Globalization and Orientalism

The presence of China in the globalized world has evolved swiftly. China is a prominent actor in the economic, political, and cultural arenas. Western representations of China have evolved accordingly and the discourse of Orientalism is playing a leading role in the production and circulation of contemporary images of China. Chu 2008 considers that Orientalist discourse is still alive in the globalized world, although it is evasive and difficult to detect. Callahan 2012 emphasizes that China’s rise in the contemporary era is frequently credited to its cultural exceptionalism, an idea based on an essentialized representation of China. Dirlik 1997 analyzes the representational strategies underlying the invention of Chinese capitalism and its consequences. Ban, et al. 2013 examines the traces of Orientalism in neoliberal discourses of China in US newspapers. Dirlik 1995 and Hahm 2000 tackle the emergence of Confucianism in the contemporary world from a very different perspective; while Hahm considers that contemporary Confucianism is not affected by Orientalism, Dirlik claims that the Confucian revival is an instance of the essentialization of Chinese culture. Other scholars have examined the placing of Chinese literature in the global literary system and the strategies employed to do so. Shih 2004 analyzes the technologies of recognition of Chinese literature and the biased discursive strategies employed by Western markets and academia. Prado-Fonts 2008 provides a critical reflection on the mechanisms of production and circulation of Chinese contemporary literature in the global system.

Ban, Zhuo, Shaunak Sastry, and Mohan Jyoti Dutta. “‘Shoppers’ Republic of China’: Orientalism in Neoliberal US News Discourse.” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2013): 280–297.
DOI: 10.1080/17513057.2013.792941Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article explores American media representations of China and the presence of Orientalism in the contemporary neoliberal discourses of China. It analyzes news articles about Chinese economy and commerce and focuses on three topics: Chinese opulence, Chinese responsibility in consumption, and Chinese exceptionality regarding international law.
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Callahan, William A. “Sino-speak: Chinese Exceptionalism and the Politics of History.” Journal of Asian Studies 71 (2012): 33–55.
DOI: 10.1017/S0021911811002919Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Addresses the evolution of intellectuals and scholars’ ideas about the rise of China. Many authors today consider that China is following its own path to modernity. Callahan argues that this exceptionalistic and Orientalist discourse is based in an essentialized representation of China as a civilization.
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Chu, Yiu-Wai. “The Importance of Being Chinese: Orientalism Reconfigured in the Age of Global Modernity.” Boundary 2 35.2 (2008): 183–206.
DOI: 10.1215/01903659-2008-009Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of the role of Orientalism in a globalized world. Examining Zhang Yimou’s films as a case study, the author argues that the question of Orientalist discourse is still relevant today, although Orientalism is more evasive and difficult to detect in the contemporary era.
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Dirlik, Arif. “Confucius in the Borderlands: Global Capitalism and the Reinvention of Confucianism.” Boundary 2 22 (1995): 229–273.
DOI: 10.2307/303728Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article examines the Confucian revival in the contemporary world. After analyzing how Confucianism has been revived in very different contexts, Dirlik argues that this revival is remarkably essentialist, a consequence of the dangers of postcolonial criticism and evidence of the persistence of Orientalism in the age of global capitalism.
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Dirlik, Arif. “Critical Reflections on ‘Chinese Capitalism’ as Paradigm.” Identities Global Studies in Culture and Power 3 (1997): 303–330.
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Analyzes the invention of “Chinese capitalism” and the implicit discourses underlying this concept. Far from being an attempt to replace Western global capitalism, this Chinese form of capitalism is an offspring of global capitalism. The author argues against essentialist and culturalist explanations of the success of East Asian economies.
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Hahm, Chaibong. “How the East Was Won: Orientalism and the New Confucian Discourse in East Asia.” Development and Society 29 (2000): 97–109.
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This article addresses the question of whether the contemporary ideas of Confucian capitalism and Confucian democracy are imbued with Orientalism. Hahm argues that this is not the case, as he considers that contemporary Confucian discourse is a reflection of the transformations of East Asia in the last decades.
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Prado-Fonts, Carles. “Against a Besieged Literature: Fictions, Obsessions, and Globalisations of Chinese Literature.” Digithum 10 (2008): 37–45.
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Citing Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged as a paradigmatic example, this article examines the critical elements that intervene in the production and circulation of Chinese literature in the global world, such as self-Orientalism, the confusion between fiction and reality, or the obsession for political interpretations of modern Chinese literature.
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Shih, Shu-mei. “Global Literature and the Technologies of Recognition.” PMLA 119 (2004): 16–30.
DOI: 10.1632/003081204X22828Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An essay on the “technologies of recognition” applied to Chinese literature. Shih centers her analysis on two of them: academic discourse and the literary market, claiming that global literature can no longer be a world literature that includes representatives of the “rest of the West” in a display of exoticism.
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Chineseness and Orientalism

Globalization and China’s new position in the world have necessitated a reassessment of the identities of China and the Chinese. The tensions of globalization demand a continuous re-construction of Chineseness, and this permanent redefinition has been evident when cross-cultural negotiations have been at stake. Chan 2006 explores Western mechanisms of appropriation of Chinese identity and culture since early European modernity. Scherer 2001 analyzes the revival of Chinese ethnicity in Cuba through an essentialized construction of Chineseness. Wong 1995 (cited under China in Contemporary Western Literature) identifies the literary production of Amy Tan and her definition of Chinese American identity as a by-product of Orientalism. Jakimów 2012 critically analyzes the academic representations of internal migration in China and opposes to East-West essentialism. Cheng 2004 addresses the question of the identities of the Chinese diaspora through Ang Lee’s films as a case study. Chun 1995 examines the construction of official Chinese identity discourses in Taiwan since the arrival of the Kuomintang on the island. Chow 1993 approaches Chineseness from the perspective of Chinese cultural studies and with Said’s ideas as her theoretical basis.

Chan, Adrian. “On Being Chinese.” In Image into Identity: Constructing and Assigning Identity in a Culture of Modernity. Edited by Michael Wintle, 159–174. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006.
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This chapter argues that Chinese culture and identity has endured a process of distortion and reshaping that began with the missionaries in the 16th century and continues today. The author analyzes the ideas of the first Western sinologists for explaining the way China has been appropriated by Western culture.
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Cheng, Shao-Chun. “Chinese Diaspora and Orientalism in Globalized Cultural Production: Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Global Media Journal 3 (2004).
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This article argues that Ang Lee’s use of Orientalist aesthetics in this blockbuster film mirrors the filmmaker’s Chinese diaspora identity. The author argues that in a globalized world the idea of an authentic China must be questioned and problematized.
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Chow, Rey. Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993.
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Said’s critique of the Orientalist discourse is the starting point of this analysis of a series of topics on Chinese cultural studies: migration, diaspora, popular music, gender studies, literature, intellectual history, modernism and postmodernism, and Chineseness.
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Chun, Allen. “An Oriental Orientalism: The Paradox of Tradition and Modernity in Nationalist Taiwan.” History and Anthropology 9 (1995): 27–56.
DOI: 10.1080/02757206.1995.9960869Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis based on Said’s theoretical framework of the production of identity discourses on Chinese history and culture in Taiwan since the 1950s. The author argues that this process responds to the Kuomintang government necessity of creating a national culture that would conform to the standards of the modern nation-state.
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Jakimów, Małgorzata. “Chinese Citizenship ‘after Orientalism’: Academic Narratives on Internal Migrants in China.” Citizenship Studies 16 (2012): 657–671.
DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2012.698488Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article explores the academic representations of internal migration in China. The author discusses the meaning of Orientalism and post-Orientalism and argues that boundary-transgression between rural and urban areas enables the citizenship of Chinese migrants ‘after Orientalism’ and simultaneously challenges the East-West essentialism.
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Scherer, Frank F. “Sanfancon: Orientalism, Confucianism and the Construction of Chineseness in Cuba, 1847–1997.” In Nation Dance: Religion, Identity and Cultural Difference in the Caribbean. Edited by Patrick Taylor, 153–170. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
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This chapter analyzes the experiences of Chinese diaspora in Cuba and the contemporary revival of Chinese ethnicity there. This revival is based on an Orientalist and essentialist conception of Chineseness which is constructed through a process of self-Orientalization that is manifestly reflected in Chinese religion in Cuba.
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