Beauty is the troubled water that brings disasters: the making of the seductress-spy in Republican China (1911–1949)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the origins of the Chinese seductress-spy to further existing literature on women and war, female archetypes and espionage in China. The diffusion of knowledge about women such as Mata Hari from the West to Republican China (1911–1949) developed a new female archetype that was neither Chinese nor Western, but both Chinese and Western. Instead of seeing Chinese seductress-spies as equivalent to their Western counterparts, we should see them as a uniquely gendered nationalist construct that had roots in the Japanese, English, as well as Chinese understanding of the role of women during wartime situations.