Recent cultural production by Chinese immigrants to France such as Dai Sijie, Shan Sa and Gao Xingjian play out a complicated relationship to the political and aesthetic ideals that long characterized their home country in the French imaginary. Indeed, 19th century French race theory and world politics relegated China to the status of a rival power that needed to be subdued. Even over the next century, fear of Chinese invasion permeated the work of the most famous of France’s Sinophile writers like Victor Segalen and Marguerite Duras.