Chinese Student Responses to Yellow Peril Fears and Sinophobia in Britain, 1910–1930

The Chinese in early twentieth-century Britain, particularly those living in the East End of London, became the scapegoat of many moral panics and Yellow Peril discourses during the First World War, and were subsequently demonised in the British press, fiction, and film. Much of the focus from scholars has been on the British attitudes, perspectives, and actions towards these Chinese migrants living in Britain, leading to an underrepresentation of Chinese voices and overreliance on British sources. As a result, these migrants appear to be passive ‘victims’, powerless to resist broader social and political forces. My chapter challenges such characterisations by exploring the case of Chinese students and their associations in Britain during this period, a small and largely overlooked cohort. By tapping into an underused source—their own writings and publications—I argue that these students made a concerted effort to critique harmful misconceptions, correct ignorance, subvert racial stereotypes, and put forward their preferred image as modern Western-educated students of the world. Although radical steps and protests were rare, this chapter suggests the scholarship has underestimated the extent to which students opposed derogatory representations of Chinese people. In doing so, this chapter demonstrates how this cohort challenges the assumption that Chinese people were passive victims in the face of hostility and instead actively resisted Sinophobia through their associational lives.