There can be no doubt that we should take “Asia” as a historically, culturally and intellectually interrelated space from the viewpoint of which we can rethink the past, the present and the future. However, this view of “Asia” has lasted a long time which can be traced to the Meiji period of Japan and the late Qing Dynasty of China. The present essay surveys both the Asiaist discourses in the Meiji period in Japan and the reaction of Chinese intellectuals to “Asiaism” from the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republican Era. The author suggests that the radical differences between the two parts which exhibited themselves in their respective positions, emotions and approaches were relevant to the concrete situations Japan and China faced with at that time, especially to their specific development of nationalism and pursuit of modernity. The “nationalism” at the turn of the 20th century became a passionate pursuit of modernity on the behalf of the whole country, both in China and Japan, namely, to ensure national survival by searching for power and wealth, which in turn just meant westernization and modernization; henceforth, the mixture of the national positions and the universal values. Therefore, the recognition of the same “Asia” for Chinese and Japanese during that period differed from each other to a much greater extent. Presently some scholars proposed the implication of “Asian Values” and “The Community of Asia”, but in my opinion, we should still ask the following questions: a) What does “Asia” mean, East Asia or Asia as a whole? b) How can “Asia” the geographical unit become “Asia” the unit of cultural identity? c) Is the “Asia"with which the Japanese identified the same as the political and cultural community with which the Chinese and Koreas identified themselves ? d) Finally, is “Asia” a community which still needs to be constructed or is it already a community which had gained its identification, in other words, is it a history which has been made or is it merely a hopeful yet unfinished actuality?