Harvard East Asian Monographs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2021. xiv, 294 pp. (Figures, maps, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$55.00, cloth. ISBN 9780674260245.
Mainstream studies examining Asianism (aka, Pan-Asianism) in Chinese, English, and Japanese are inclined to view it from a Japanese perspective, which stems from the fact that Japan exerted regional hegemony in Asia from 1894 to 1945 while China was in crisis. Studies of Chinese Asianism are few in terms of published journal papers, book chapters, and as aspects of monographs. However, compared to such a wealth of studies on Japanese Asianism, not a single monograph on the genealogy of Chinese Asianism from a Chinese perspective is to be found in these Chinese, Japanese, or English before Craig Smith’s Chinese Asianism. With its discussion of various dominant types of Asianism across multiple periods, this book can be read as a Chinese genealogy of othering the Western hegemony through a discourse on the international regionalization of Asia between 1894 and 1945.
The monograph has eleven chapters, including the introduction and conclusion chapters. The first three chapters cover Late Qing Asianism. Chapter 1 deals with Asianism around the time of the 1898 Reforms in China and Japan, focusing on the Sino-Japanese Alliance based on “yellow race” discourse as a reaction of the white Western powers to a common threat. Chapter 2 focuses on Chinese intellectual Asianism and its practices, which attempt to construct the identity of Asianism through Confucianism. This chapter also shows the theoretical tension between Confucianism and the discourse of race. Chapter 3 discusses Chinese Asianism in the revolutionary camp, based on the combined discourse on race and civilization in the first decade of the twentieth century. Chapter 4 demonstrates the shift of Chinese Asianism to the dichotomous reconceptualization of East vs. West in the journal Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi) as a direct impact of World War I, which emphasized the potential contribution of Eastern civilisation to mankind. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with Chinese Asianism between 1917 and 1924. Chapter 5 concentrates on the communist Li Dazhao’s 李大釗 cosmopolitan regionalism of “New Asianism” in 1919 to criticize Japan’s expansionism. Chapter 6 discusses developments from Sun Yat-sen’s earlier strategic Asianism under Japanese leadership to Sun’s later shift to his well-known critical questioning of Japan’s running counter to Asianism through his reconceptualization of Asianism in 1924. In my understanding, chapters 5 to 9 are the main arguments of this book. Chapters 7 and 8 introduce the official discourse of Guomindang (Kuomintang) and the non-official discourse of intellectuals as the new development of Sun’s Asianism after the latter’s death in 1925. Chapter 7 shows how China became the stage of other Asian nations’ practice of Asianism and how Asianism became a China-centric liberation theory of all oppressed Asian nations against imperialism, including Japan. It also introduces how Chinese Asianism differentiated itself from Japanese Monroism. Chapter 9 focuses on wartime pro-Japanese Asianism under Japanese leadership, as advocated by the “puppet regime” of Manchukuo. The concluding chapter, which echoes the introduction, reminds us that the history of Chinese Asianism from 1894 to 1945 is essential to understanding current Chinese foreign policy, such as the One Belt, One Road Initiative.
Further to its primary contribution of presenting a comprehensive view of Asianism from a Chinese perspective over a period of 51 years, is this works careful investigation of Chinese Asianism both within and beyond the Guomingdang, i.e., both official and nonofficial discourses on Asianism in the 1930s and 1940s. It systematically follows Asianism as part of Sun Yatsenism in 1924 and its development following Sun’s death in 1925 until 1945, both on official and nonofficial levels. Yet another contribution, in my view, is that it has contextualized contemporary Chinese foreign policy through Chinese Asianism from 1894 to 1945, which enables us to understand China and East Asia with greater historical depth.
On the other hand, one critique I have is that this book is somewhat weak in its positioning of Buddhism/India in constructing discourses on both Chinese and Japanese Asianism as it concentrates too heavily on the role of Confucianism in discourses on Asianism in Japan and China. It is essential to emphasize this point because of the crucial role of India/Buddhism—or allow me to use the term “India as method”—as a counter to Japanese leadership in Chinese Asianism. In this regard, the following studies can be seen as support for my argument: chapters 3 (by V. Murthy) 5 (by K. Sheel), 8 (by B. Tsui), and 11 (by M. Thampi) in Tansen Sen and Brian Tsui, eds., Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and Asia, the 1840s–1960s (Oxford University Press, 2021); chapter 2 of Duan Ruicong’s Shō Kaiseki no senji gaikō to sengo kōsō: 1941–1971 (Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s wartime diplomacy and his ideas on postwar policies, 1941–1971) (Keiō University Press, 2021); chapter 6 of Brian Tsui’s China’s Conservative Revolution: The Quest for New Order 1927–49 (Cambridge University Press, 2019); and chapter 3 of Shaoyang Lin’s Dingge yiwen: Qingji geming yu Zhang Taiyan fugu de xinwenhua yundong (Revolution by means of culture: the late Qing Revolution and Zhang Taiyan from 1900 to 1911) (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 2018). This weak positioning of Buddhism/India in Chinese Asianism results in the author overlooking the strong influence of Okakura Kakuzo’s Asianism from the early 1890s until the 1910s on the later Chinese discourse of “spiritual Eastern civilization” vs. “material Western civilization,” not to mention Okakura’s influence on Chinese aesthetic Asianism in art historiography. The sequential priority for Okakura in constructing his Asianism was “Buddhism-Daoism-Confucianism.” Furthermore, Smith does not attach sufficient importance to Zhang Taiyan’s China-India-centric Asianism after 1906, which emphasizes geopolitical elements of India and China and, more importantly, the politics of the “oppressed nations” at the hands of imperialism. Concomitantly, the author fails to see the continuity between Zhang’s Asianism and the pan-Asian liberation Asianism of later years, and also does not address the third party of India in Chinese Asianism. In Zhang’s Asianism, Buddhism and philosophical Daoism were more important than Confucianism, just as India was more important than any other country.
Lin Shaoyang
University of Macau, Macau