India and China: Not Very Close Neighbors, After All

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China in May in order to improve India’s relations with China and enhance bilateral trade. As usual, much was said in the media of both countries, especially India’s, about India and China being two ancient civilizations that lived in harmony with each other for thousands of years. Yet, behind these platitudes lies a harder truth: India and China have traditionally been quite removed from each other historically, culturally, and politically.

If their civilizational interactions were harmonious, it was mostly because political interactions were few and far between; most contact between the two was indirect, through traders and other intermediaries.

Today, India is far more interested in China than China is in India. There exists the perception within India that it needs to catch up with China economically, geopolitically, and even socially. On the other hand, as a Wall Street Journal survey of Chinese citizens on the eve of Modi’s May visit revealed, even well-educated Chinese people in Beijing know or care little about India, holding a variety of incorrect, outdated, or stereotypical views, such as believing that India is a Buddhist country. In short, India does not loom large in the Chinese consciousness.

How did the Chinese historically view and interact with South Asia? South Asia was a region that ranked far lower in Chinese cultural and political calculations than East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia – regions that historical Chinese states tried at various times to dominate or influence culturally, if not politically. The high barrier of the Himalaya mountains prevented effective contact between Indian and Chinese civilizations. For its part, historical India was much closer to Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian civilizations than China.

China first discovered India during the reign of the Emperor Wudi (141-87 B.C.E.) of the Han Dynasty, which ruled China after the previous Qin Dynasty unified China. The Han were facing the threat of nomads – at this time the Xiongnu – to their north, a common theme in Chinese history. In an attempt to outflank the Xiongnu, a palace bureaucrat Zhang Qian was sent west  to seek out allies. His trip lasted a lot longer than expected (138-126 B.C.E.) and he stumbled upon the civilizations of Central Asia and then India in the course of his travels. This was a great shock to the Chinese, who were unaware that there were other great nations in the world; in comparison, the civilizations of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and India all had grown up together. Shockingly, Zhang also discovered that there was trade between China and India through a series of middlemen. Much of this trade passed from Sichuan in the west to eastern India. Zhang’s trip notwithstanding, no distinct political contacts were made.

The rise of the Kushan Empire around this time made the existence and culture of China and India much more available to each other, though there was still to be almost no direct contact. The Xiongnu had driven the Kushan west, and they eventually founded an empire that stretched from northern India through Afghanistan and east into Xinjiang; this is what gave rise to the so-called Silk Road. At this time, Buddhism also spread into China along this route. Buddhism was to have a deep and lasting impact on China but it hardly carried Indian culture into China. Buddhism in China became highly sinified and subordinated to Confucianism.

After the disintegration of the Han Empire, China largely lost interest in India. It was during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 C.E.) that the subcontinent garnered the most attention from China. During the Tang Dynasty, several Chinese traveled to India. The most famous of these was Xuanzang, who traveled overland through the Buddhist kingdoms of Xinjiang and the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan (where he saw the Bamiyan Buddhas). The first political contact between India and China was established at this time, and it was to be the only significant contact for several centuries. Through the influence of Xuanzang, the north Indian king Harsha sent emissaries to the Tang capital of Chang’an (Xi’an) and received a response in 643 under a military mission led by one Wang Xuance. Upon another visit in 648, Wang Xuance discovered that Harsha was dead and his party was subsequently attacked by a successor of Harsha’s. This led to a quixotic incident where a joint Sino-Tibetan force attacked India in 649 to gain vengeance, winning a great victory and capturing Harsha’s successor.

Yet even at the height of Chinese influence and intervention in South Asia, China was becoming much closer with Southeast and Central Asia. Many states in these two regions became part of the Chinese tributary system. India did not. Soon, Chinese power was eclipsed and its civilization began to turn inward; meanwhile neo-Confucianism eclipsed Buddhism. All this led to a period of Chinese disinterest in the subcontinent.

Indian traders from Tamil Nadu made direct voyages to Chinese ports during the Song Dynasty and Muhammad Tughluq of the north Indian Delhi Sultanate raised 100,000 soldiers to attack China, only for this force to be destroyed in the Himalayas by local Hindu rulers. Despite this, South Asia was barely on the radar of the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, though the brief Ming voyages (1405-1433) under Zheng He visited Sri Lanka and the southern coasts of India. The early Qing also ignored India though they may have exchanged ambassadors from the Mughals.

South Asian states and China began to truly become politically involved with each other in the 18th century as Tibet came under Chinese military control and the Sikh and Gurkha empires expanded deep into the Himalayas. The Qing military fought the Sikhs and Gurkhas on behalf of Tibet several times. In the Sino-Nepalese War of 1788-1792, the Qing drove the Gurkhas out of Tibet and forced Nepal to pay tribute to the Qing. Reflecting present attitudes, this was not because of a significantly new Chinese interest in dominating South Asia, but was the result of China’s desire to consolidate its position in Tibet. The same logic led the Chinese to beat back a Sikh invasion of Tibet in 1841-1842 in a war that led to no significant changes.

Until the 19th and 20th centuries, most Indians and Chinese knew little about each other and their respective civilizations. The subtlety and depth of each civilization – their classics, their theories of statecraft and war, their religions – were mostly alien to each other. With the extinction of Buddhism in India and its fall from prominence and assimilation with native philosophies in China, few Chinese had any abiding interest in India. Politically, South Asia rarely concerned China, and political incidents between China and India were rare.

When there was contact or conflict, it was rarely due to Chinese geopolitical interest in the South Asia region itself. Typically, other Chinese interests – whether prestige, revenge, or Tibetan politics – drove interaction. Therefore, China’s historical attitude toward South Asia is one of indifference, or at the least one of minimal interest. Pre-modern political contact has always been minimal and culturally, Buddhism is the only link between them. But Buddhism has become so assimilated into Chinese culture that it is seen as one of the three teachings, the sanjiao, of China, along with Daoism and Confucianism, rather than a product of South Asia. Despite the rhetoric of ancient and harmonious ties, Sino-Indian relations suffer from a chasm that can be attributed to a lack of mutual understanding and incomprehension about each other’s cultural and geopolitical premises.