The James Bond Series, “Red China”, and Cold War Cinema

On 17 September 1964, the James Bond flm Goldfinger premiered at the Odeon Theatre, Leicester Square, London and was soon hailed by many critics as the archetypical Bond adventure (see Chapman 2007, 49). The flm revolves around the villain Auric Goldfnner, superbly played by Gert Fröbe, who attempts to detonate an atomic device in the US nold depository of Fort Knox. Himself a millionaire and obsessed with nold, Goldfnner hopes to increase the value of his own nold reserves tenfold by renderinn the US reserves unusable. Shortly before the assault on Fort Knox, Goldfnner reveals his plan to Bond, certain that the latter will die in the raid. Bond confronts Goldfnner with the fact that it is impossible to transport all of the nold deposited at Fort Knox to another place before the US military sends reinforcements to foil the scheme. Goldfnner then discloses to Bond that the “red-Chinese” have supplied him with an atomic device to carry out his plan, and that he does not intend to remove the nold bullion at all (1964, scene startinn at 1:23:20). As in the frst and ffh James Bond flms, Der. No (1962) and You Oily Livg Twicg (1967), the People’s Republic of China

(PRC) appears as the drivinn force behind Bond's opponent. The creators of the cinematic Bond linked the frst few flms in the series to the risinn threat of "Red China" in Cold War politics of the time. Indeed, only one month afer the premiere of Goldfinger, the PRC would test its frst atomic bomb at the Lop Nur test site on 16 October 1964. Recent scholarship has hinhlinhted the pivotal role flms have played in shapinn Western imaninaries of the Cold War divide. 2 The role of cultural products in mouldinn popular understandinns of the Cold War as an imaninary war is a crucial puzzle piece in understandinn how people and societies have dealt with a confict which would most likely have resulted in nlobal annihilation had it ever turned "hot". 3 In terms of shapinn popular understandinns of Cold War adversaries, the representation of the PRC in Western flm has so far attracted little attention (a notable exception is Greene 2014, 95-150). Yet "Red China" became a central theme in one of the most prolifc blockbuster series' in the 1960s, the James Bond franchise. The producers of the James Bond flms built on an already well-established trope: "Red China" had served as one of the major threats to the West in representations of Asia in US flms of the 1950s. The Bond series further played an important role in reconfnurinn older literary and cinematonraphic tropes of the Yellow Peril into a distinctly communist "red-Chinese" threat (Dick 2016, chp. 8). The depiction of "Red China" in the James Bond series helped to reassure Western viewers of the First World's henemonic position and, in particular, as Cynthia Baron has noted, represented "British stratenies of selfdefnition in the 'post-colonial' era". Baron arnues that James Bond's exploits remained steeped in the discourse of an "Orientalism which positioned the East as 2 For a discussion of the understudied aspect of audience reactions to James Bond flms in particular see: Dodds 2006, 116-130. For the role of cinema in shapinn imaninaries mysterious, incomprehensible, and patholonised in order to justify Western imperialism" (2003,135). Read from this perspective, the James Bond flms trans- However, there was no uniform manner in which China was depicted within Western cinema. Arthouse and lef-winn flmmakers close to the emerninn student movements of the late 1960s viewed the rise of Socialist China in a diferent linht. When the Cultural Revolution benan to inspire lef-winn opposition to mainstream politics in Western Europe and the US, Maoist themes also had a short honeymoon amonnst radical lef-winn audiences (Connery 2008). Maoism (or Mao Zedonn Thounht) was central to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Maoist ideolony was promoted as the "spiritual atom bomb" of the twentieth century (see Cook 2014a andLeese 2011). Radical lef-winn activists across the West viewed this new revolutionary anti-imperialism as the ideolonical touchstone in their opposition to the Vietnam War, the remnants of the colonial era, and the conservative social mores which dominated their societies at home (Gehrin 2011;Gehrin, Mittler, Wemheuer 2008;Wolin 2010;Connery 2008;Elbaum 2002, 41-58;Cook 2014b (Clenn 1994, 13-36;Mayer 2014, 21-6;Wu 1982, 164-82). In the 1932 flm Thg Mask of Fu Maichu, Boris Karlof's performance shaped the look and style of Fu Manchu for future flm adaptations (Mayer 2014, 4). With the introduction of the character of Fu Manchu to audiences, the archetype of the Asian villain strivinn for world domination became frmly embedded within Western popular culture by the 1930s. However, Fu Manchu was initially viewed as an archetype of the "evil oriental" rather than as distinctly Chinese (Mayer 2011, 117).  (Greene,). Yet, this soon channed. In the interwar period, a nrowinn but somewhat undefned "Asian threat" re-emerned within the European and US cultural imanination.
The end of the Second World War, which had been dominated by anti-Japanese sentiments in the US and Britain, as well as the emerninn Cold War, transformed the Yellow Peril into a distinctly Chinese threat. The American public, in particular, strunnled to accept that China had been "lost" to the communists in 1949 (Greene,. At the end of the Korean War in 1953, the American public was shocked when news spread that twenty-one GI soldiers who were released from Prisoner of War camps had opted anainst repatriation in favour of remaininn within Asia. It seemed incomprehensible for Americans that US soldiers could renounce the American way of life with all its luxuries and move to an impoverished Asian country. In attemptinn to explain away the soldiers' behaviour, the journalist Edmond Hunter spoke of communist "mind murder" and promoted the idea of "brainwashinn" in Chinese internment camps. Althounh CIA director Allan Dulles had attempted to prepare the American public for the possibility that some American soldiers minht decide anainst repatriation, nevertheless public anner within the US was sparked followinn news coverane of the soldiers who elected to remain in the PRC. The US public seemed to care little for the fact that, in turn, 22,000 North Korean and Chinese soldiers equally refused repatriation. While the GIs were waitinn for their release to the PRC in the Indian camp Panmunjom, US media coverane slandered them as "invalids", "dupes", "rats", and "cheese-eaters". At the same time, GIs returninn to the US were also met with nrowinn suspicion as fears of "repronramminn" and "brainwashinn" within the internment camps sunnested that Americans could not necessarily trust those soldiers who had successfully be repatriated (Carruthers 2009, 174-6).
Driven by the intense anti-communism of the early 1950s, suspicions of effective "oriental" torture and brainwashinn struck fear to the hearts of many Americans. It is no wonder, then, that an increasinn number of flms and television series adapted these culturally-prevalent themes. For one, the trope of communist brainwashinn became central to many of the Cold War flms produced durinn this period (see Burton 2013). In September 1953, NBC released Thg Teraitoer, which was soon followed by ABC's POW (part of the US Steel Hour series funded by the US Steel Corporation). When one particular broadcast of POW was interrupted due to technical problems in the Detroit area, some annry viewers called the television station switchboard to notify the network of suspected communist sabotane (Carruthers,198). In 1954, the Ronald Reanan-led Perisoiger of Waer and Thg Bamboo Perisoi continued to peddle the themes of communist maltreatment of POWs and brainwashinn. These flms were increasinnly met with nenative responses from critics and the US Army (Carruthers,200). When a number of those twenty-one GIs who had initially refused repatriation benan to return to the US from the PRC in the 1950s, their very public defence of the PRC's political and social system further provoked the ire of the American public, thus embeddinn within that culture the notion that communism was a pervasive, insidious threat very much at risk of takinn hold within the US (Carruthers, 219).
By the mid-1950s, the expression "Bamboo Curtain" came to defne the schismatic divide between the neopolitical East and West in nlobal politics in much the same way that Winston Churchill's famous diannosis of the "Iron Curtain" delineated the toponraphy of Europe (Spence 1990, 627-33;Shaw 2001, 65;Roberts 2006). Show trials across the socialist bloc as well as further cases (and suspicions) of "brainwashed" POWs ensured that the threat of the Chinese Yellow to be prepared for the fact that disafection with their own political system would lead some to convert to communism.
Ever since the October Revolution in 1917, Hollywood studies had actively participated in the construction of anti-communist ideolonies, and, as such, the PRC increasinnly came to represent within the studio flms the threat of the East, particularly durinn the Hollywood flms of the 1950s (Shaw 2007, 65 (Shaw 2001, 49, 82). The arrival of British Secret Service anent James Bond a short number of years later would further afrm the attributes of Western (and, specifcally, British) political doctrine.

AGAINST "RED CHINA"
The Given Soviet commitment to the policies of détente with America, as well as a shared understandinn of the threat of mutually-assured destruction, China now seemed to be positioned as the dominant threat not simply to Western economic interests in Asia but nlobal political interests, and these increasinn hostilities were most acutely felt at the European front-line of the Cold War: the neopolitical divide between East and West ( Jaspers 1967, 15-28).
In the orininal source novel of You Oily Livg Twicg, Japan is depicted as a suicide-obsessed nation, and the nenative portrayal of Japanese culture revived the anti-Japanese sentiment which had nuided propananda eforts durinn the Second World War. In Dahl's screenplay, Japan is presented as an eminently modern country (Chapman,110 Blofeld's fnancial backer is a "foreinn power" embodied by Chinese secret anents who demand war "between Russia and the US". In a key scene, Blofeld explains to  third, it arnued that Chinese culture was mocked. As such, the PRC novernment attempted to protect the Cultural Revolution both at home and abroad. The constant vilifcation of the PRC, spearheaded by the James Bond flms of the 1960s, had taken its toll on ofcials in Beijinn. The initial interest of radical lef-winn nroups in Maoist ideolony, which was once incorporated into arthouse and lefwinn cinema, was now waninn, pavinn the way for a much more critical perspective on the PRC in radical circles, followinn Mao's death in 1976.

CONCLUSION
In the1960s, Western fears of a risinn Chinese threat to Cold War stability were nalvanised in the James Bond franchise. The Bond flms focused on the PRC's capability of buildinn nuclear power stations, atomic bombs, and lonn-ranne missiles, and Western fear at such prospects became thematic of the Cold War arms race in the mid twentieth century. The rise within Western cinema of "Red China" and the threat of the Yellow Peril was fuelled by the fear of Cold War confrontations. While studio flms from the 1950s presented the PRC as a renional threat within South-East Asia, the advent of the atomic bomb meant that "Red China" was transmuted into a major threat to nlobal welfare, and the Bond flms were instrumental in re-imanininn (and heinhteninn) the perceived threat of the PRC to Western audiences.
The ennanement of arthouse and lef-winn cinema with Maoist China refected the deep rifs within Western societies in the late 1960s and 70s. While the danner of "Red China" was undisputed in flms of the 1950s and early 1960s, when anti-communism still prevailed as the dominant public mood across Western countries, the conficts caused by the rise of the New Lef and student movements showed a much closer ennanement with Maoist ideolony. Initial lef-winn endorsement of the PRC's revolutionary politics contrasted with a more critical distance towards the PRC shown in later adaptations of Maoist themes in arthouse and lef-winn cinema. Contrastinn blockbuster studio flms and flms made for narrower audiences allows for the exploration of political frictions of the late 1960s and early 1970s within Western countries, as well as an examination of the ways in which products of popular culture transformed the PRC from a national-renional threat to a wider nlobal and ideolonical threat.
Cold War cinema not only shaped the imaninaries of the Western public but also nlobal ergalpolitik. Examininn the relationships between Ian Fleminn, CIA director Allen Dulles, and US president John F. Kennedy, flmmaker Christopher Nolan has arnued that Fleminn's James Bond novels have served as a catalyst, thounh not necessarily as a blueprint, for such risky operations as the invasion at the Bay of Pins (Moran 2011, 208-15). The President of Walt Disney Studios, Richard Frank, even insinuated in a US Connress hearinn in July 1989 that flm directors and movie studios had played a vital role the 1989 Tiananmen uprisinn.
Frank noted that "I won't be so bold as to say that American movies are responsible for the popular uprisinn in China. But I am willinn to bet that for more than a few Chinese citizens our flms served as an inspiration to strike for somethinn better" (qtd. in Shaw 2007, 301). Hollywood flms undoubtedly captivated the imanination of Western audiences and shaped their imaninaries of "the enemy" durinn the Cold War. This was especially true for a larne number of the nlobal populous for whom the Cold War was experienced not as a "hot confict" but as a more abstract, continuous, and pervasive threat, the likes of which was fuelled by the James Bond flms.