China

SHAKEDOWN TIMELINE: America’s 21st century war on China. An epic collection of Anna Chen’s writing and broadcast strung on a narrative through-line. Twenty five years of political and cultural issues about China, its history and the diaspora. How America builds its “strategic competition” casus belli label into Opium Wars 2 and World War 3.
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China Panic! – It’s official. 2008 isn’t just the Year of the Rat and the Beijing Olympics. It’s also China Panic Year. The sleeping dragon awakens, so everyone’s trying to shoot it down before it wipes the gunk out of its eyes. The British media keep pressing the ‘filth and pestilence’ button with SARS, Foot and Mouth and Asian Flu. America gets poisoned toothpaste and a pet food scare. 2008 isn’t just the Year of the Rat and the Beijing Olympics. It’s also China Panic Year. Anna Chen’s first column for New Internationalist 11 March 2008
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China, Copenhagen and climate change: China is widely regarded as the Big Bad in this scenario, called “the world’s biggest polluter”, and yet the West has been belching out carbon emissions for 160 years with no serious sign of abatement. The US is still the biggest polluter per capita with Americans still consuming a huge proportion of the world’s resources. I don’t know whether the figure of one American kid consuming the same as 100 Bangladeshi children still holds true, but the nation that wants gas at ten cents a gallon and persists in its divine right to drive Humvees is telling China to shut the fridge door. 6 December 2009 READ MORE >>>

Copenhagen COP15 and China opening day: Anna Chen on BBC World Service TV Videos of the BBC TV debate on the climate change summit, 7 December 2009. SEE VIDEOS >>>

Copenhagen summit final day: Anna Chen on BBC World TV, 18 December 2009. SEE VIDEO DEBATE >>>

Sinophobia and Copenhagen: open letter to the Guardian’s Mark Lynas 22 December 2009. PREVIOUSLY: The story so far … One moment we were told there was a scandal brewing with the leaking of the ‘Danish Text‘, a stitch-up of the poor nations by the wealthy, with the US and Britain among those implicated (8th Dec 2009 onwards), the next moment, this happened. The Copenhagen blame game continues with the media reaching a hysterical pitch in their attempts to demonise China over the disappointing results at the climate change summit. 22 December 2009 READ MORE >>>

China, Britain and the Nunzilla Conundrum, BBC Radio 4, 18 March 2010: Charting the colossal changes in China as it happened. On the eve of its global take-off in tech, Anna Chen marks China’s transformation from world factory, making our tat, to manufacturing powerhouse embarking on its new international role as technology leader. 
“I searched in vain for items as audaciously pointless as the giftware designed in Britain, made in China and consumed in the West. … Chinese manufacturers are honing their skills with the giftware trade. My beautiful Mac laptop and half my cosmetics (with their posh French labels) are now made in China.”
Written and presented by Anna Chen. Producer Sally Heaven BBC 2010
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Working for the Clampdown: Niall Ferguson’s testosterone theory of history. Review of the Channel 4 series, Civilization: Is the West History? Western academics are busy giving America & its allies intellectual rationalisation for carving-up US rivals, Europe and China. There’s more money to be made from a splintered Europe and China than leaving them in peace. 10 March 2011
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Is China a responsible stakeholder? Chatham House report review – The Chatham House-run International Affairs website asks if China can be trusted as a “responsible stakeholder” in world politics. The Red Dawn school of politics suggests that China is only pretending to be peaceful. She’s expected to reveal her full gory glory in true Fu Manchu fashion once all her plans and capabilities are in place. I saw Team America. I know how this one plays out. 21 May 2011
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President Obama in Yo Mama war with China: Pacific Rimmers look out! Obama’s Pivot to Asia gets underway in Australia. Is it my imagination or is cuddly President Barack Obama picking a fight with China?   No sooner has the world begun to heal after the Bush neocon excesses that led to such bloodshed in the Middle east, not to mention an enormous fillip to the arms industry, than Obama announces a tectonic shift in US imperialist policy. Only a few weeks since Hillary Clinton announced that the new superpower was in the queue not so far along from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, Syria, Iran and Korea for whipping into shape, I listened to Obama’s speech to the Australian Parliament last night, struck by sabre-rattling out of a bygone age. “The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay.” 17 November 2011
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The Triumph and Turmoil of Niall Ferguson’s obsession with China – Channel 4 review: “Could China’s rise repeat the same disastrous trajectory of Germany a hundred years ago? It’s something to ponder the next time you order a Chinese takeaway.” So says Niall Ferguson as the US moves forces out of the Middle East, where they’ve done such a fine job, and into the Pacific. 13 March 2012
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2012 Olympics: The monstering of swimmer Ye Shiwen says much about declining superpowers – Guardian, 2 August 2012
Chinese Olympic athletes are people, not comic book villains. Something’s going on when one nation is so singled out.
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British sportsmanship bites the dust: Ye Shiwen swimming gold-medal smear
Having failed to make the doping charge stick, the liberal media are now insinuating that there must be genetic engineering behind Ye Shiwen’s stunning 400-metre gold-medal win on Saturday in the individual medley. If so, the Chinese can’t be very good at it as they’d have had a squad of super-athletes smashing all the records rather than one solitary outstanding sportswoman. And it wasn’t Chinese scientists who tried to copyright the human genome for private profit. 1 August 2012
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London Chinatown strike Tuesday: protest against UK Border Agency fishing raids:
British residents have been sent texts by the UK Border Agency telling them to “go home”. Two of them have received the threatening messages and we wonder how many more innocent UK citizens are being frightened out of their wits. In response, London’s Chinatown will be shut down tomorrow as a day of action against heavy-handed racist tactics. 21 October 2013
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Global economy running on fumes: let’s have a jolly nice war
BREXIT RIPS BRITAIN FROM EUROPE WHICH HAS BEEN MOVING TOWARDS CHINA UNDER THE IMMENSE GRAVITY OF THE RISING SUPERPOWER’S VAST SCALES OF PRODUCTION AND ADVANCING TECHNOLOGY. This renders the UK vulnerable as it tips out of the EU frying pan and into the US fire. (Victoria Nuland 2014: “Fuck the EU”.) 21 October 2016
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Trump’s protectionism could be midwife to prosperous Asian region — if he doesn’t nuke it first – 19 November 2016
New Beijing-backed RCEP trade treaty offers hope to emerging markets in Asia. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has just had a grovelling meeting with President-Elect Donald Trump. My guess is that Abe offered Trump unconditional support in the South China Sea and Pacific. As Europe implodes and the US goes into protectionist lock-down, the strongest potential area of growth is the Asian region (including Australasia) due to powerful demographics. Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts Asia to drive nearly two-thirds of global growth over 4 years. But that was BT (before Trump). … If the US doesn’t engineer a war, then Trump’s protectionism is the very mechanism that could give China and the region the chance to break out as world economic leaders while the US self-destructs and developed Europe splinters — under hard conditions in the short term but clear winners in the long. 19 November 2016
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What’s Donald Trump’s trade war with China REALLY about? History repeats itself. Trump’s fantasy trade deficit was an excuse for carving up China in a rerun of the Opium Wars as he kicked off the US war on China in earnest in a bid to outdo Obama’s Pivot to Asia. The trade deficit turned out to be a trade surplus in America’s favour. 13 November 2018
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Happy New Year: Will Donald Trump’s tiny hand press the Big Red Button in 2019? It’s fascinating to watch the United States of America write itself a new narrative. Not the one where it dominated the post-World War II liberal global order and made itself the wealthiest economy on the planet by a long chalk, but a victim narrative in which poor little America is bullied and ripped off by China,. Formerly one of the poorest countries in the world, the hard-working superpower is looming in America’s rear-view mirror. 24 December 2018
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Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Chinese economy continues. Donald Trump’s attempted hostile takeover of China’s economy continues apace. The Chinese walked into an ambush when they presented their latest round of changes last week thinking they were still negotiating. Kicked off by Reuters’ “exclusive” briefing by “three U.S. government sources and three private sector sources”, the media then fell in with Trump and trade representative Lighthizer’s narrative that the Chinese “reneged”on a deal that was already sewn up. 11 May 2019
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China: scapegoat and diversion from what ails western capitalism. We all know the United States of America was built on an ancient Native American burial ground, courtesy of European immigrants. Another original sin was slavery; kidnapping men, women and children from Africa for the brute workforce that built so much of America’s wealth. Then there’s the one per cent ripping off the American people for decades, failing to invest in infrastructure, education, housing, healthcare while the richest 26 individuals took as much as the bottom half of humanity. 5 October 2019
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Let’s blame China: an infantile disorder when Covid comes knocking. How the White House turned “China bought us time” into “China lied, people died” and put the world at risk. Stupefied by the past three years of a vicious trade war on China, the commentariat allows Covid information which could save our lives to be buried in the mush of memes and accusations put out by the various right-wing think tanks. From Bannon to the fugly Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), slanderous diversions from China’s fight against the novel coronavirus flew thick and fast. Meanwhile, the bodies pile up. 23 June 2020
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The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters from the West’s Own Id: No Cold War on China. The people who brought us AUSTERITY, then sold us BREXIT on the promise of a trade deal with China beyond the dreams of avarice, are the same Empire Crusaders who now want a war with it. China is the newly rich kid who’s strayed onto mafia turf and is about to be rolled. Full text of Anna Chen’s online speech at the No Cold War on China meeting, 13th January 2021
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Sinophobia: How racism has its roots in politics. In an effort to “contain” China’s rise, the US is using every dirty trick it can muster to retain its status as sole hegemon. Unable to cooperate or compete fairly, it’s busy promoting hate at macro and micro levels. Full text of speech at the online event hosted by The Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU) 6th April 2021
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The Roots of the Clash between the United States and China: Virtual Vigil for the Victims of the Atlanta Shootings. After a year of increasing anti-Asian violence encouraged by unscrupulous politicians and media, we took another lurch to the dark side when eight people were killed in the Atlanta shootings (16th March 2021). Six of them were Asian women. Elsewhere, Asian people are being regularly maimed and murdered. Full text of Anna’s talk. Organised by the Goldsmiths Anti-Imperialist Society — Sunday 2nd May 2021
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Opium Wars 2 and the propaganda war on China: No Cold War launch. Discussing the build-up in hostility towards China in the context of the Opium Wars of the 19th century and the propaganda war leading us there once again. At the start of the first Opium War in 1839, China was the most technologically advanced country in the world. It had already invented hydraulics, gunpowder in the 9th century, ships’ rudders, the stirrup, paper, moveable type printing and much more.
Video and text of Anna Chen’s speech, 16 June 2021
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Open letter of complaint to Channel 4 Dispatches “Covid Leak”, 2 September 2021: Channel 4 squanders its reputation as a serious investigative news channel by regurgitating overwrought partisan claims about lab-leak theories which have been regularly debunked by virologists who are excluded from the programme. Politicising Covid-19 for partisan US agenda deflected from government mishandling and cost lives. 2 September 2021
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A Permanent Reservoir of Scapegoats: how racism drives the geopolitics of China’s rise. America has become a supernova, both imploding and exploding at the same time, leaving a fragmented shell of its former self. Unfortunately, it seems intent on dragging us all to hell with it. Video and text of Anna Chen’s speech, 6 October 2021
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The West’s propaganda modus operandi: a short 21st century timeline of the race to World War III. When China explored the world in the 15th century and reached as far as East Africa, they traded a bit and brought back a giraffe.
When Europeans landed in the Americas in 1492, they killed and enslaved its native peoples, stole their treasures and gave them smallpox blankets in an early form of biological warfare. 
In North America, 100 million native Americans were killed, Black Africans were put through slavery, Jim Crow and imprisonment. The USA was literally built on an ancient Indian burial ground, because that’s what they’d turned it into. 
And that’s pretty much been the template ever since. Video and text of Anna Chen’s speech, No Cold War event, 25 May 2022
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We’ll always have Beijing: from hero to villain – In the half-century since Bruce Lee’s early death in July 1973, the image of Chinese in western culture and business has come full circle with an added twist of spite. Is whitewashed Doctor Strange about to morph into Dr Strangelove or be eclipsed by Fu Manchu redux? Asia Times 24 August 2023
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The Guardian on China and spying – Despite lurid claims by the Guardian about China and spying, no charges have been brought against the accused parliamentary researcher since his arrest and release in March. All that’s left is smear and innuendo where balanced coverage might have yielded the additional light aspired to in the headline.  Comment at the Guardian editorial 13 September 2023
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Zoo time at Operation Circe: How the Wolf Warrior was invented – It had long been one big Yo Mama case for the prosecution, with no defence permitted for the country that hadn’t had a war in over 40 years. China didn’t buckle even when the far-right Usual Suspects immediately accused it of creating the virus in the lab. Nor did China return the insults, instead turning the cheek to every barb. Having endured several years of non-stop verbals, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lijian Zhao finally dared to talk out of turn and posted THAT tweet, raising the Wuhan Military Games as a possible point of infection. Primed, locked and loaded, the western media exploded in an entirely uncoordinated wave of outrage as one. In one short pithy Tweet, China was transformed from placid scapegoat into Wolf Warrior for defending itself on this one occasion. Asia Times 5 September 2023
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America blames China for its opioid epidemic: The United States of Amnesia is at it again. Blasting China with a whole new round of sanctions and indictments, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s claim on Tuesday, that China is responsible for the fentanyl crisis, diverts from the opioid epidemic caused by American companies Johnson & Johnson and others, “profiting from a flood of addictive painkillers that devastated communities”. 5 October 2023
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Has the US had its chips? Chip tech under fire: US chip tech once more faces government friendly fire, courtesy of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s rant about cutting off China from AI technology. Severance in the same way you might close a stable post equine scarper: is it the door or the horse that’s bolted? Welcome to late stage capitalism where making a buck is no longer the name of the game. Trashing your competitor is the aim. 3 December 2023
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Heroes and villains of 2023: Xi Jinping or Boris Johnson? Most of the public by now recognise Boris Johnson’s role as all the Horsemen of the Apocalypse rolled into one overfed scary clown. Instead of delivering the yummy trade deals with China as promised, Johnson nailed us to the USS Titanic and torpedoed our global lifeboat. Now we send war fleets to China’s coast instead of cargo ships. 31 December 2023
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King of the castle buys media China hate wreckage. Every day we get the same tedious dose of China hate from the mainstream press. You’d be hard-pressed to even find one objectively positive comment about the rising superpower that’s already saved us from one calamitous American crash and was set to float us out of the travails of late-stage capitalism. The upper crust running the show lacks the character to manage the transition to a multipolar world. 18 March 2024
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The Covfefe Papers: A 500-page timeline on Covid-19 and its history, published online in episodes. To come

A Celestial Star in Piccadilly, BBC Radio 4 (2009): Anna Chen wrote and presented the profile of Hollywood’s first Chinese screen legend, Anna May Wong, introducing new audiences to the most famous Chinese woman of the 1920s and 30s in the West. Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 January 2009
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The Good Earth film review: When caucasian actor Paul Muni was cast as the male lead in MGM’s 1937 blockbuster movie, The Good Earth, set in China and based on Pearl S Buck’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, there was no way the Chinese movie star stood a chance of playing his wife, O-lan. 30 December 2008
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Anna May Wong Must Die! A cultural response to the underlying dynamic of the West’s continuing imperial ambitions. To be serialised …

Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury. A lively, well-written journey through Anna May Wong’s life and career, if light on the political landscape that shaped her. Book review by Anna Chen, 11 April 2024 – READ MORE >>>

Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor exhibition at the British Museum 2007-8. A fascinating exhibition about Qin Shihuangdi (Ying Zheng) and the warrior army created for his afterlife. The exhibition enjoyed record attendance but is now largely scrubbed from the net. (June 2008)

The Opium War by Julia Lovell: book review. Smoke and mirrors. Western academia prepares for a 21st century carve-up of China and absolves the narco-capitalists’ guilt by blaming the victim, revealing a moral vacuum at the centre of the imploding West. (17 May 2012)
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The Opium Wars: The Steampunk Opium Wars, written and narrated by Anna Chen, debuted in 2012 at the Royal National Maritime Museum in Greenwich to mark the opening of the new Traders Gallery. The surprise was how few in the audience had even heard of the Opium Wars, with some assuming the wars’ purpose was to stop China trading the narcotic, not ram it down their throats.
What the show made clear was that Britain’s East India Company used industrial methods to mass-produce cheap opium in Bengal which the British army then forced at gunpoint on the weakened nation, turning what had been an aristocratic vice into a nationwide addiction. (2012)
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The Taiping Rebellion: What the British Museum’s Hidden Century exhibition doesn’t tell you about the Taiping Rebellion. It’s leader, Hong Xiuquan, can be seen as China’s first communist whose efforts to transform a decaying society into a “Heavenly Kingdom” were an influence on Mao Zedong. (May 2023)
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The Chinese in Britain, BBC: 2007 Anna Chen presented the groundbreaking series on BBC Radio 4 in 2007. From the 17th century Jesuit priest Shen Futsong to students, medics and seamen, it’s been a rich, unsung cross-fertilisation of cultures. Photos and episode summaries. (2007)
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Trevor Phillips race watchdog a waste of space, shock, horror 26 July 2009
… But even before his appointment in 2003, when we were the subject of an anti-Chinese campaign in the national media blaming the Chinese for the Foot & Mouth Disease outbreak in 2000 which was so royally screwed up by the government, the CRE was the chocolate teapot. Chinese were scapegoated, attacked and vilified, some physically, their businesses trashed and yet the public body did nothing. It failed miserably in its goal, “To use its legal powers to help eradicate racial discrimination and harassment.”
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City scope: blue plaque marks black chapter Anna Chen in Liverpool, 21 December 2013
Thousands of men sailed from Shanghai and Canton to Britain in the years following the Blue Funnel Line’s establishment, in 1866. For decades it was Britain’s main trading conduit with China – and by the second world war, some 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese sailors had made Liverpool their home. When hostilities ceased, however, many of these men who had risked their lives to serve the Allied merchant navy found themselves rounded up and covertly returned to China against their wishes.
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Europe’s forgotten army, South China Morning Post: 30 August 2014
Anna Chen remembers the Chinese Labour Corps who served in the European theatre of war on the side of the allies in World War I. South China Morning Post magazine 30 August 2014
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The Chinese in Britain, South China Morning Post: 25 October 2014
Personal tales of a journey to a new land. Today, 400,000 ethnic Chinese call Britain home. But their 325-year history of labour contributions to the UK, from being 17th-century seamen to establishing London’s now-famous Soho Chinatown, have often gone undocumented and unnoticed.
South China Morning Post magazine 25 October 2014
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The Chinese in Britain: a brief history. Historical overview by Anna Chen.
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Foot and Mouth Disease 2001: How attempts were made to scapegoat the UK Chinese for Prime Minister Tony Blair’s disastrous handling of the Foot and Mouth disease outbreak only months after George W Bush designated China a “strategic competitor”.
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How the Press was done, 2001: The three key press campaigns ran by Anna Chen in 2001 included the first ever UK Chinese protest when they were scapegoated for the government’s failure to deal with the Foot and Mouth outbreak that started in 2000.
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A Permanent Reservoir of Scapegoats: 6 October 2021 How racism drives the geopolitics of China’s rise. America has become a supernova, both imploding and exploding at the same time, leaving a fragmented shell of its former self. Unfortunately, it seems intent on dragging us all to hell with it. Text of Anna Chen’s speech on increasing sinophobia for No Cold War, 6 October 2021
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How the Covid pandemic was weaponised: Natural disaster, man-made calamity. Trump’s super-spreader policy along with media distortions had battered 400 years of science and evidence-based Enlightenment. As a result, US desperation to keep top dog status as China caught up with it looked like plunging us into a new Dark Age with tech. Covid pandemic timeline, commentary and research as it happened.
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YELLOWFACE: Dehumanisation starts by being rendered invisible and turned into a blank canvas onto which constructed images are projected, supplying a permanent reservoir of scapegoats. A raft of exclusions despite Britain’s record of colonisation embed yellow peril stereotypes deep into the collective unconscious. Examples and article at this page.
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Coolie: the story of the Chinese who built the transcontinental railroads of north America. To be serialised …

Chinese are defined at subliminal levels under the central controlling idea of western imperialism. Yes, it’s still there, they just made it invisible. And that’s why it’s so effective.

ARTS REVIEWS Contents Page: BOOKS, FILMS, TV, THEATRE, EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS
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Suzy Wrong Human Cannon rocks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 1994. Written and performed by Anna Chen, this was the first show by a Chinese Brit to play the festival.
“Charming, witty and sophisticated … I am entranced, won over.” SUNDAY TIMES
“Hard hitting and often hilarious … arresting … engrossing and provoking.”  THE SCOTSMAN

55 Days at Peking – film review: 3 February 2008: Set in 1900, 55 Days purports to tell the story of the Boxer Rebellion, when indigenous Chinese made a last effort to get the rapacious foreign powers out of their own country. Eleven imperialist nations occupied major chunks of China with 13 out of 18 Chinese provinces under foreign control. 
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Priscilla Queen of the Desert review: looks pretty, tastes foul
Imagine my surprise to see the all-white troupe of drag queens at the centre of the story looking after their own interests as a minority; cast as heroes, not against their enemies in the real world, but against Cynthia, an evil East Asian woman who is a Filipino import bride with a manic compulsion for firing ping-pong balls from her vagina. Depicted as the shrewish scourge of Bob, the beloved blue-collar mechanic, in reality the women she represents make up one of the most pitiful, least powerful minorities on the planet. Cynthia fulfils every dirty sleazy lazy stereotype conceived around the Yellow Peril and their sexuality. 21 March 2009
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The King & I review: go you Orientals!
Hah! Here’s one show you can’t accuse of yellowface. Last night’s Rodgers & Hammerstein 1951 musical The King & I, revived at the Royal Albert Hall, had so many Asian actors they must have emptied out every Chinatown in Britain. … The orientalism of The King & I is so transparent that I hope we know by now what we’re looking at. The notion that the British project was to bring civilisation, a superior culture and democracy to “primitive” societies has been so thoroughly debunked, not least by the debacle of Iraq, that I hope we can all laugh at the show’s assumptions.  24 June 2009
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Chinese serial killer tamed: Turandot first night review
Dangerous Dragon Ladies and Passive Lotus Blossoms at the English National Opera. Puccini gives us the other half of his Orientalist pairing in the opera Turandot, first performed in 1926. Having sweetened up audiences with Madama Butterfly‘s selfless lotus blossom character, he shocks the bourgeoisie with a tale of a wicked serial-killer Princess who kills her innocent male suitors when they fail to answer her three riddles. 9 October 2009
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Sherlock, Episode 2: The Blind Banker – BBC1, 1 August 2010: An embarrassment of riches when it comes to pressing home the stereotypes of 21st century mass manipulation. Revival of Yellow Peril tropes critiqued.
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Alice In Wonderland review: Disney and the Opium Wars. Tim Burton hints at a dirtier British Empire when Alice (Mia Wasikowska), straight from hanging out with a stoned caterpillar (Alan Rickman) and victory over the Jabberwock, directs her family to the fortune to be made in China. 26 March 2010
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55 Days at Peking – film review: 3 February 2008: Set in 1900, 55 Days purports to tell the story of the Boxer Rebellion, when indigenous Chinese made a last effort to get the rapacious foreign powers out of their own country. Eleven imperialist nations occupied major chunks of China with 13 out of 18 Chinese provinces under foreign control. 
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Chopsticks At Dawn: orientalism in western music – BBC Radio 4, 7 June 2010. Anna Chen investigates the genesis of that irritating cartoon music cliché. Analysis and interviews with academics and musicians. 7 June 2010
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Memo to the RSC: east Asians can be more than just dogs and maids – Anna Chen, Guardian, 22 October 2012.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s casting for The Orphan of Zhao seems to hark back to an age of British imperialism. It’s no fun being bred out of the cultural gene pool. Watching TV, theatre or film, I’m on constant alert for a glimpse of someone who looks Chinese, for the slightest resemblance to an estimated 499,999 others like me living in the UK. 22 October 2012
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RSC The Orphan of Zhao review: Aladdin for middle-class grown-ups – Morning Star review, 8 November 2012.
Sometimes it’s useful being the barbarian at the gate. This “outsider” role has been imposed on British east Asians by top-ranking arts institutions for far too long, so don’t blame us when we warm to it. “Normal” roles are denied us unless they’re race-specific with a “Chinese connection”, and sharp white elbows mean we often don’t even get those. The welcome policy shift towards cross-racial casting — intended to give ethnic minorities a fair share of parts, representing British society in all its glorious variety — has led instead to one-way traffic and exciting new opportunities for white actors to scarf up the juiciest Chinese parts. 8 November 2012
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Royal Shakespeare Company: now is the winter of our discontent – Anna Chen’s South China Morning Post City Scope column, 16 December 2012.
When the hallowed Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) cast East Asian actors in a miserly three roles out of 17 in the Chinese classic (aka, “the Chinese Hamlet”), it sparked an uprising among British East Asians that would garner support from as far afield as America and Australia. 16 December 2016.
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Yellow Face triumph for David Henry Hwang launches London’s new Park Theatre: review – Morning Star, 28 May 2013
This smart and savvy comedy delivers a knock-out blow to any still-entrenched belief in certain crepuscular crannies of theatre land that east Asians can’t produce culture. Racism no longer has an outlet in blackface performance but yellowface lingers as a method of corralling an ethnic minority into a ghetto, depriving them of jobs and creative participation. 28 May 2013
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David Henry Hwang interview: race, class and Yellow Face – Morning Star, 7 June 2013
‘We’re pretty good on race sometimes but terrible on class’ 
East Asian playwright DAVID HENRY HWANG talks to Anna Chen about issues of cultural assimilation and equality of opportunity.  7 June 2013
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Anna May Wong biography – book review: Not My China Doll by Katie Gee Salisbury is a lively introduction to Hollywood’s first Chinese screen legend but lacks analysis of the political landscape that shaped her. 11 April 2024
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Three Body Problem: the politics of the book, Netflix and Tencent series.
How did the Three Body Problem work as a book, a Netflix series and a Chinese Tencent series? That’s a Three Body Problem in itself.
Netflix’s eight-part series 3 Body Problem had the opportunity to dramatise Book One of the Hugo Award-winning blockbuster series and illuminate it through a western lens. Instead, they turned it into a banal addition to the multiple-body of China-hate currently pervading every nook and cranny of the culture. 8 June 2024 –
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Poetry: Published since 14, a selection of Anna’s poetry from the personal to the political.

On the radio: Anna wrote and presented programmes for BBC Radio 3 & 4. She had her own series on Resonance FM — Madam Miaow’s Culture Lounge — and has also appeared on the World Service, Monocle and BBC TV.

About Anna Chen: London-born writer, performer, poet and broadcaster