Imagining the continent's future: China, India, and post-war Asia, 1937-1949

Lo, YC

Thesis

Imagining the continent's future: China, India, and post-war Asia, 1937-1949

Abstract:: This thesis examines how in the late 1930s and 1940s leaders of China’s Nationalist Government and the Indian National Congress imagined post-war Asia and attempted to realise their ideas. Post-war Asia has been often understood in terms of nationalist movements without recognising how Asian leaders sought to shape their future on the Asian level. This thesis argues that China strategically sought an Asia where China would eventually be the dominant power; India aimed to, in some sense, create an Asia in its idealised self-image, where nations were relatively more equal in status. Both Chinese and Indian leaders supported the independence of Asian nations. Yet Chinese leaders thought that this would endanger the interests of the Chinese diaspora, while their Indian counterparts worried that new Asian nation-states could not defend themselves against the great powers. The Nationalist government insisted on diasporic Chinese being Chinese citizens and must be respected if not privileged by host governments; the Congress expected diasporic Indians to become naturalised citizens of host societies. Yet neither strategy resolved the discrimination diasporic communities faced. Decolonisation enabled majority national groups to enter into power but continued to marginalise minority groups. Both Nationalist China and Nehruvian India favoured planning and state-led industrialisation, but the Nationalists also anticipated China’s economic dominance in Asia. Moving beyond the perspective of superpower struggle, this thesis highlights China’s and India’s agency in shaping their region. Their ideas on Asia’s future were among the very first contributions from newly independent non-Western nations on how a post-war, post-colonial Asian state should be. Compared to the civilisational argument of early twentieth-century Pan-Asianism, Chinese and Indian leaders helped redefine Asia’s self-identity: from underdeveloped to prosperous and ‘modern’. Apart from the much-analysed border conflicts and geopolitical competition, the different visions for Asia helped contribute to the China-India divergence.

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APA Style

Lo, Y. C. (2022). Imagining the continent's future: China, India, and post-war Asia, 1937-1949 [PhD thesis]. University of Oxford.

MLA Style

Lo, Y. C. Imagining the Continent's Future: China, India, and Post-War Asia, 1937-1949. University of Oxford, 2022.

Chicago Style

Lo, YC. 2022. “Imagining the Continent's Future: China, India, and Post-War Asia, 1937-1949.” PhD thesis, University of Oxford.
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