ASIAN AMERICAN MEDIA NEWS
China Demonized in Latest Clancy Novel
o one has profited more than centi-millionaire novelist Tom Clancy from exploiting the xonophobia of middle America. The Bear and the Dragon, his latest war-games potboiler, taps lustily into the anti-China hysteria that had raged during the likely period of its writing. The novel postulates a Beijing leadership that seeks economic salvation in Siberia's mineral wealth and launches a surprise attack on the Russian leadership. A pillar of America's military/industrial/media complex, Clancy has no qualms about keeping anti-Chinese sentiments at a fever pitch by peppering the book with racial epithets on the order of "slant-eyed motherf***ers", "chinks" and "yellow barbarians".
Of course the world is saved from World-War III by the cool resourcefulness of Americans like President Jack Ryan. One surprise twist in this 1,000-pager is that one good guy happens to be a Japanese American CIA operative named Chester Nomuri who helps unravel the Chinese gameplan by seducing the mistress of a top Chinese leader. Nomuri had made a brief appearance in Debt of Honor, written last decade when Americans were more worried about an ascendant Japan than either backward China or the then crumbling Soviet Empire.
(8/30/00)
o one has profited more than centi-millionaire novelist Tom Clancy from exploiting the xonophobia of middle America. The Bear and the Dragon, his latest war-games potboiler, taps lustily into the anti-China hysteria that had raged during the likely period of its writing. The novel postulates a Beijing leadership that seeks economic salvation in Siberia's mineral wealth and launches a surprise attack on the Russian leadership. A pillar of America's military/industrial/media complex, Clancy has no qualms about keeping anti-Chinese sentiments at a fever pitch by peppering the book with racial epithets on the order of "slant-eyed motherf***ers", "chinks" and "yellow barbarians".