yellow horde

yellow horde (plural yellow hordes)

1. (derogatory, racially offensive, sometimes capitalized) East Asian nations or people, especially the people of China or Japan, conceived as foreign and menacing due to their vast population, non-Western cultures, or supposed antagonism to the West.
   • 1941, Edgar Snow, The Battle for Asia, New York: Random House, page 26:

     As we rode slowly over the Lunghai Line toward Sianfu, across the brown sun-baked plains of Northern Honan, soon to be flooded when the Chinese breached the Yellow River dikes to stop the advancing Yellow Horde, we passed many troop trains en-route to the front.

   • 1994 December 18, Steven Erlanger, “The World: Demons in Russia's Mind Arise Again—in the Flesh”, in New York Times, retrieved 29 July 2008:

     So the Chinese and Central Asians are the barbaric, faceless, yellow horde that may once again drown the noble Slavs.

• Often used in the plural form.

• yellow peril