India in Chinese Quest for Nationalism & Modernity: Perspectives from Chinese Travel Writings

This paper examines how was India a factor in shaping Chinese reflections on nationalism and modernity. Although India and China historically shared deep civilizational linkages, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century transformation of China from a civilization-state to a nation-state intensified anxieties over sovereignty and identity. These concerns found vivid articulation in Chinese travel writings on India. A glimpse of that is available in two contemporary Chinese travelogues which positioned India both as a comparative reference and as a cautionary example. Huang Maocai’s 1886 narratives entitled Xiyou Riji and Yindu Zazhi, that were, composed after his travel through Tibet, Myanmar, and India, underscored Qing’s frontier insecurities amid the geopolitics of the “Great Game” and situated India as a reference for their own quest for civilization and nationhood. Kang Youwei’s Yindu Youji (1901–02), on the other hand, interrogates India’s colonial subjugation to critique Western modernity and reimagine Chinese nationalism. By juxtaposing these two seminal travelogues, the paper highlights how India served as both inspiration and warning in the Chinese quest to reconcile tradition with modernity, and to redefine nationalism in an age of empire and global transformation.