Political discourses on China have swung between naïve idealization and racist contempt over the past decade. This pendulum swing has roots in the oscillating extremes of positive and negative interpretations of China in Western scholarship over the last eight centuries. From the medieval church’s depiction of the Tartars, through early modern priests’ debates about Chinese religions, Enlightenment thinkers’ disputes over the nature of China’s political economy and moral systems, to the Romantic and scientific-racist Sinology of the nineteenth century, perceptions of China have alternated between seeing it as a civilization sharing Christian morality with Europe and as a satanic or idolatrous civilization threatening Christian values and freedom. These shifts have stemmed from both the internal dynamics of the academic field and evolving political and economic relations between Europe and China.