The racist curse of Fu Manchu back in spotlight after Chevrolet ad

With talon-like fingernails and ludicrous "yellow-face" makeup, the character of Dr Fu Manchu embodies a stereotype of Chinese villainy that now seems comically racist.

In the 1932 film, The Mask of Dr Fu Manchu, he offers up a virginal blonde to his baying Asian horde. "Would you have maidens such as these for your wives?" he says. "Then conquer and breed! Kill the white man … and take his women!"

His words drip with malice and evil genius; his moustache droops low and his eyebrows arch high. But while there seems little place for Dr Fu Manchu in a modern multicultural world, variations on the character have proved remarkably resilient, says Dr Jenny Clegg, a British Sinologist who has studied the stereotype.

"Racial stereotypes of any kind can be very persistent, they recur again and again in different variations depending on the changing circumstances, but it gets back to the same message, which is this conception of 'us' and 'other'," said Clegg, author of Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril: The Making of a Racist Myth. "It's all about dividing people according to salacious ideas about race that underlie the feeling of western superiority."

The spirit of Fu Manchu is not yet extinct. He was recently referred to in an ill-fated Chevrolet commercial, which was pulled worldwide this week after its content was highlighted by the South China Morning Post. The advertisement's soundtrack referred to China as "the land of Fu Manchu", where people say "ching-ching, chop suey".

Chevrolet's parent, General Motors, apologised profusely for any offence caused. The ad, which had been screening in Canada since March, had been the subject of complaints and was deemed offensive by Chevrolet Canada executives, who quietly cut the offending lyrics last week and released an edited version of the ad locally. The entire global campaign was pulled on Wednesday as a result of the furore.