As far as historical fiction is concerned, I disagree with his claim. The historical novel has been an established Chinese literary genre since the Ming dynasty. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (sanguo yanyi), a fictional account of the Three Kingdoms era, is one of the most influential works in Chinese literature. Additionally, the pinghua genre of oral storytelling has existed since the 13th century and is considered the forerunner to the historical novels of the Ming period. Pinghua performances retold popular folk legends loosely based on historical events.

Historical novels were one of the most popular genres of the Ming dynasty. Nearly every historical era or dynasty is covered and glorified by at least one work of Ming historical fiction (with the Yuan dynasty, a period in which China was under alien rule, being a notable exception). A full bibliography of Chinese historical novels can be found in Sun Kaidi's Zhongguo tongsu xiaoshuo shumu. For further reading, see Chang, Shelley Hsueh-lun. History and Legend: Ideas and Images in the Ming Historical Novels. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990.

Which Scifi writer?

I would argue this for Japan : the feeling that the past and the present are different (and the future might be different) is a feeling that existed. During the Classical times, the emperors encouraged the spread of Buddhism and Chinese litterature to put an end to the barbary of the past. Then during Edo Era, the thinkers of the "kokugaku" movement said otherwhise, that the pre-Chinese culture times were a sort of Golden Age and that Japan should go back to its route. There was also, during Heian Era, the fear of Mappou (End of law), that would come in the middle of the 11th century, and that would announce a sort of Buddhist dark time with moral corruption and all sors of catastrophe. That spawned a very interesting litterature where one of the main theme was that the future would be grim and the world would change dramatically compared to the present (10th century C.E.) times.

As far as Europe is concerned, I think the Renaissance and its obsession with Classical culture is a clear symbol that a strong sense of the past being different (at least amongst the educated elite) existed before the 19th century.

In the West, people of the Renaissance had a strong sense of that difference. They invented the concept of the Dark Ages/Middle Ages lying between the Classical world and themselves, the modern people. They did not develop the scientific romance as a genre as happened from 1817 forward. They did not develop the historical novel a la Sir Walter Scott. What they did develop was high fantasy, like Orlando Furioso which they set back in a fantastical early medieval land that didn't follow known history. Now, does one consider the 14th C Amadis de Gaula historical fiction or high fantasy?

In any case, the 19th C is hardly the earliest era to have a sense of past, present, and future.