The Unparalleled Invasion
"The Unparalleled Invasion" is a science fiction story written by American author Jack London. It was first published in "McClure's" in July 1910. Plot summary. Under the influence of Japan, China modernizes and undergoes its own version of the Meiji Reforms in the 1910s. In 1922, China breaks away from Japan and fights a brief war that culminates in the Chinese annexation of the Japanese possessions of Korea, Formosa, and Manchuria. Over the next half century, China's population steadily grows, and eventually migration overwhelms European colonies in Asia. The United States and the other Western  powers launch a biological warfare campaign against China, resulting in the total destruction of China's population, the few survivors of the plague being killed out of hand by European and American troops, and China then being colonized by the Western powers. This opens the way to a joyous epoch of "splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output". In the 1980s, war clouds once more gather between Germany and France. The story ends with the nations of the world solemnly pledging not to use the same techniques that they had used against China, whereas the pledge is implied to be unstable  with German soldiers having been exposed to "a sort of hybridization between plague-germs" in China and their physiological conditions being studied by German scientists. Background and context. "The Unparalleled Invasion" was included in "The Strength of the Strong", a collection of stories by London published by Macmillan in 1914, which also included "The Dream of Debs", a critique of capitalist society in the US, and "The Strength of the Strong", which used a primitive background as metaphor of social injustice among men. "The Unparalleled Invasion" has been used to support claims of racism in London’s work. Academics pointed  out that the premise, themes, and even some passages were borrowed directly from London's 1904 "Yellow Peril" essay, where London warns that "the menace to the Western World lies, not in the [Japanese] little brown man, but in the four hundred millions of [Chinese] yellow men". However, other academics have also claimed that this story is a "strident warning against race hatred and its paranoia", due to its focus on the danger posed to China by the West. The story has also been viewed as a prescient political prediction of the rise of China as a world political power  triggered in part by Japan’s imperial aspirations.