China, India, Ideas for Regional Economic Recovery, and Asianism in Early Post-Second World War Asia

Abstract Asianism, the idea that Asian nations should unite and overcome Western imperialism, was thought to have faded as the Second World War ended. At that point, China appeared embroiled in a civil war, India in Partition. Yet their visions for Asia’s future have been overlooked. This article examines how they envisioned Asia’s economic revival through the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE). It argues that the Chinese diplomat P. C. Chang, frustrated with a Eurocentric UN, led UN members in the Global South to advocate an institution that supported Asia’s developmental aims. Although China and India believed that ECAFE should help Asian economies surpass their pre-war levels, they disagreed on how to achieve that object. ECAFE was not simply an example of the neglected post-war Asianism and non-Japanese Asianism. Chinese and Indian ideas about ECAFE helped redefine Asia’s self-identity: from a shared cultural heritage to prosperity and ‘modernity’. However, despite the rhetoric of unity, the disagreements between China and India over ECAFE indicate that Asia in the late 1940s lacked international solidarity. As Nationalist China declined, India supplanted its leadership of Asianism. The competition between different strands of Asianism helped lead to alternative post-war visions, such as Afro-Asian internationalism.