China-India Studies – Center for Global Asia

CGA Research Projects

China-India Studies

The study of interactions and comparisons between China and India is one of the key research agendas of the Center for Global Asia. Since its establishment in 2016, the Center has hosted several workshops and colloquiums, published edited volumes and compiled special issues of international journals on the topic. It is in the process of creating an extensive database platform on the research project, for which it has received funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities.

The key features of the China-India research project include:

China-India Studies Database

The China-India Studies database includes a bibliography of key writings on interactions between China and India as well as Chinese language books on the topic. The database also includes timelines that summarize key junctures in the development of Sino-Indian studies, including China-India exchanges in Shanghai before 1949 and between 1949 and 1967, as well as a chronology of China-India interactions during the 1950s.

The highlight of the database is the catalog of relevant archival material in both in India and China. This includes material from the recently declassified materials in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) in New Delhi, ranging from telegrams, minutes of meetings, memoranda, reports, correspondence, press clippings, and photographs, among others. The special collection of Nehru’s papers provides vivid details on the interactions and exchanges between China and India in the period of decolonization between 1947 and 1964. This part of the project is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Catalogs of archival materials collected from the Beijing and Shanghai archives, such as those pertaining to mutual visits and diplomatic meetings after 1949, will also feature on the database.

Digital Projects

While the database platform is intended to facilitate future research on China-India Studies, the objective of the digital projects is to introduce some of the relevant topics to general audiences. The Virtual Gallery, entitled “Flowers on One Stalk: China-India Artistic Interactions the Early Twentieth Century,” is a key part of such projects. The Gallery features almost two hundred paintings of Chinese artists who visited India in the early twentieth century. Blog posts and StoryMaps are also important ways in which the faculty and fellows at the Center for Global Asia have narrated the history of China-India interactions. Two data visualization projects highlight the detailed research on China-India interactions that the Center has undertaken. The first relates to the statistics of crimes committed by Indians in pre-1949 Shanghai. The second consists of a partial list of Chinese individuals interned at the Deoli Camp in Rajasthan, India, during the China-India war of 1962.

Academic Publications and Book Series

Several of the events hosted by the Center for Global Asia have resulted in publications in both the English and Chinese languages. The Oxford China-India book series publishes the latest research on China-India interactions and comparisons. Prasenjit Duara, Tansen Sen, and Anand Yang are the series editors. One of the edited volumes published in the series, Beyond Pan-Asianism, resulted from an event hosted by the Center and has contributions by several of its former fellows. The Center was also involved in the publication of two special issues of journals, the International Journal of Asian Studies (Cambridge University Press) and Crossroads (Brill). The Center has collaborated with Fudan and Peking Universities to publish essays on China-India studies in the Chinese language as special issues of journals and in book form.

Events and Capacity-Building Initiative

The Center has hosted several symposiums and capacity-building workshops on China-India Studies in collaboration with Peking and Fudan Universities. With the Harvard Yenching Institute, the China India Institute at the New School, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Affairs at the National University of Singapore, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, it co-organized the biennial conference on China-India Studies. In May 2024, together with Peking University, it organized a conference marking the 100th anniversary of the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s visit to China.