The announcement last week that Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region would enter into a cooperative counter-terrorism agreement with Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in order to learn from and potentially implement Xinjiang's tactics, sent waves of alarm through the online community of Sinologists who study politics, ethnicity, and Islam in China. A short article heralding the agreement in The Global Times noted the "unique" relationship between the two regions, due to a common "Silk Road" heritage. The piece approvingly lauded Xinjiang's efforts in preventing the outbreaks of violence since the implementation of the severe, authoritarian police-state tactics over the last few years. Ningxia officials quoted in the article cited this "success" as the major reason that Xinjiang's practices were worth studying. Doubling down on this sentiment in an op-ed. (glibly titled "Why Xinjiang governance is worthy of copying") the GT scoffed at the notion that the crackdown in Xinjiang was an eminent humanitarian crisis. Dismissing what it called "the Uyghur people's so-called misery" the paper painted a cartoonish picture of a Xinjiang run by "radical" Muslims who wantonly attacked Han Chinese, refused state funding as "not halal," and enforced a repressive and radical version of Islam. Such a scornful tone is common for the GT especially when responding to foreign critics. However, the strong defense of the tactics used in Xinjiang, and the joint effort between Xinjiang and Ningxia suggest what many of us have feared for a while: Xinjiang will be a blueprint for dealing with ethnic politics that will be exported throughout the rest of China.
That the party-state regime seeks to export the template it established when dealing with Muslims in Xinjiang has been foreshadowed for some time now. Over the course of the past few years, a steady stream of evidence points toward an expansion of the crackdown on ethnic and religious identity begun in Xinjiang to Hui communities. While the announcement of cooperation between Ningxia and Xinjiang throws the Hui Autonomous Region into the spotlight, news of regulations in Hui communities elsewhere in the country illustrates that the crackdown on religious expression is widespread, and that the party-state regime sees the Xinjiang model as a basis for ethnic politics nationwide.
What kinds of evidence suggests that a wider crackdown has been underway for a while? For one, the de-Islamification of public space in predominantly Hui communities is a clear sign of hostility toward religious expression. Nectar Gan wrote about this in an excellent article for the South China Morning Post profiling these efforts in Ningxia. The most prominent example of such de-Islamification comes in the form of mosque demolition or alteration. As Gan profiles in her piece, the forced renovation of mosques with Arabesque features, deemed by the regime to be too "Islamicized", led to the removal of domes from a number of mosques in Ningxia, and caused the redesign of several planned mosques to fit a more Sincized blueprint. Older mosques like Yinchuan's Nanguan Mosque, pictured below, remain intact numerous others experienced dramatic and sweeping changes.
Notable among these, the Grand Mosque in Weizhou became the site of intense protests in August as the community there rallied to prevent the demolition of their brand new mosque. Deemed to be in violation of building codes, and accused of being built without a permit, the mosque became a clear example of how the attempts to Sinicize and regulate Islamic architecture in Ningxia and elsewhere was a sign of a growing conflict between the state and Hui communities. Though the protestors at Weizhou effectively forced a stalemate, the efforts to expunge Islamic elements from Hui religious and cultural spaces continues elsewhere.
Nor does the de-Islamification campaign end with mosques. The regime's efforts to remove other aspects of "Islamification" or "Arabicization" extends to non-religious spaces as well. Gan's article reports that numerous structures built to honor Sino-Arab cooperation also became targets for "de-Islamification" over the course of the last two years. As recently as 2016 in cities like Yinchuan, a number of public displays reinforce the pivotal role played by the Hui as cultural ambassadors between China and the Middle East. Notably, the median of the highway between Yinchuan's airport and the core of the city placed polls from which the flags of the states of the Arab league hung. Elsewhere in the city, commercial developments like the Sino-Arab Axis, a large commercial development located adjacent to Yinchuan's Hui Culture Park (another showcase attraction for Hui culture), found its Arabesque architectural features and public sculpture changed and removed. Beyond these large scale developments, small business also experienced modifications over the last year. Reports indicated that halal restaurants and Islamic goods stores in Yinchuan and elsehwere removed Arabic script and Arabesque features from their facades over the course of recent months. The extent of this kind of branding in a city like Yinchuan is hard to overstate. For example, several branches of the Jingjiang Inn (a popular nationwide budget hotel chain) incorporated Arabesque features into their building design (see image below). This kind of branding is pervasive in cities like Yinchuan, which hope to trade in the city's status as the captial of a Muslim minority autonomous region as a potential tourist draw. Even outside of commercial ventures, Hui or Islamic identity stands out in public spaces. In Ningxia and other Hui Autonomous areas, street signs were written in Arabic as well as in Chinese. Though few Hui in these communities are able to read them, the signs reinforce the status of the communities as culturally Hui areas. These, too, are being scrubbed. Reports indicate that in Yinchuan and elsewhere the party-state stripped away Arabic on street signs.
The efforts to remove traces of Islamic or Arabicized identity isn't merely limited to Ningxia. Reports from Linxia in southern Gansu also indicated that Arabic script is being removed from businesses that sell halal food or Islamic products. These examples give an illustration of the largeness of the scale of de-Islamification, and the tremendous amount of effort being expended by the party-state in order to achieve it.
Further, over the past few years, the party-state regime made efforts to curtail the ability of children in Hui communities to study Arabic and learn to read the Qur'an. Reports from The Independent indicate that over the 2017 Chinese New Year holiday break, students in the Hui enclave of Linxia in Gansu province (sometimes referred to as China's 小麦加 or "Little Mecca") were prohibited from attending mosque schools for Qur'anic study and Arabic language training over the break. When I was doing field interviews in 2015-2016, this kinda of mosque education was a pillar of the community's Islamic identity. Children attended these holiday programs as many American children would attend a summer day camp. They serve as a means of teaching children about their Islamic heritage in a country where these opportunities are otherwise extremely limited. Beyond this, informal mosque training served as an avenue for those children who lacked the educational skills to attend higher levels of public education. Over the course of my interviews a number of respondents told me that students who were unsuccessful in traditional school could train as imams in local mosques under the guidance of clergy. This provided them with a way to avoid being stuck in traditional modes of rural economic life-- namely herding and agriculture. The mosque, provided a means of upward social mobility, for those whose career paths were not destined for college or other professionalized employment. The closure of these programs, and increased scrutiny for clerical training may pose dire consequences for those students desiring to move out of rural communities and up the social ladder, but who lack the formal education to do so.
Perhaps even more confusing than the closure of these schools, the AR Government in Ningxia also began a crackdown on food branding in March of 2018. The Global Times reported that the province was launching a campaign to "rectify" packaging and branding of halal food items so as to combat "pan-halalism." In practice, this means stripping Arabic script and Islamic imagery off the packaging for halal food, and emphasizing Chinese language and Chinese characters. The GT's reporting heralded the changes as necessary to combat the slow trickle of potentially corrosive extremism into the lives of ordinary citizens of Ningxia. In the piece, the GT noted "pan-halal tendencies appeared in some fields and religion starts to interfere with residents' social life" (sic) thus necessitating vigilance and dedication in response. For the most part, Islamic branding on halal food products in China remains unobtrusive. Examples in the photos below show how minimally the Arabic script reading "halal" appeared beside its Chinese translation (qingzhen, 清真).
This striking back against "pan-halalism" (whatever that is) actually belies how loosely halal products are overseen in China. Certification of food is not bound to any national standard, and as such, the regulation system is porous. Islamic associations in individual provinces are often left to undertake their own certification programs, and implement localized standards. But this system creates ambiguity. Can a Hui traveler from Qinghai, which exercises a rather stringent process of halal certification trust the code of a restaurant certified by the Shandong Islamic Association (as in the photo below). Far from imposing a radical ideology over China, the halal food certification process is a patchwork, and a bit of a mess. While in the field in both Jinan and Yinchuan, residents complained about how difficult eating a truly halal diet had become, thanks in large part to the numerous forgeries and fraudulent vendors who attempted to cash in quick off of halal products. Ningxia has actually been more vigilant than other provinces in combating this kind of forgery. When touring a meat market in Yinchuan in February of 2016, vendors proudly showed off their halal certificates, issued by the Ningxia Islamic Association. Not only did each certificate contain a photograph of the vendor, and a notarized stamp of approval, but also included a scannable QR Code that customers could use to contact the imam who had certified the quality of the meat (see the photo, below). It struck me as remarkably customer-oriented. However, I was assured that systems like Ningxia's were rare. Most of China's halal food is nowhere near as regulated. The charges of an extreme, all-consuming "pan-halalism" seem laughable to anyone experiencing it on the ground.
While Ningxia's coordination with Xinjiang captures the most attention, the region does not stand alone in ramping up measures to curtail Islamic religious expression. Notably, Linixa Hui Autonomous County in Gansu undertook a new series of policies in August. The official statement from the county identified the policies as aimed at "strengthening and imroving Islamic Work under new circumstances" ("关于加和强改进新形势下伊斯兰教工作的意见"). The document stresses the usual bolierplate language of the CCP regarding ethnic politics, including emphasis on improving "national unity, religious harmony, and social stability." However, the document also compels the local government to "find weak links" and encourage the Islamic community to "follow the path of Sinicization, and resolutely prevent the 'Saudi-fication' or 'Arabization' of Islam." The document continues to ban pilgrimages or other religious activities for officials of the government, ban "high-pitched loudspeakers" in mosques that would "disturb the people" with religious activities, and beseeches the people of Linxia to step up vigilance in daily surveillance. Each of these policies drastically impedes religious practice in Linxia, and conflates fairly mainstream practices associated with the practice of Islam with extremism imported from Saudi Arabia or elsewhere. Moreover, these policies identify rather benign Islamic practices as antithetical to the party's version of Chineseness.
The revelation that Ningxia and other communities are looking to replicate Xinjiang's experience is both apparent, and given the kinds of measures enacted in Hui communities over the past few years, should not be terribly surprising. The policies enacted over the last few years resemble the kinds of tactics that were implemented in Xinjiang in the early stages of the latest crackdown. The restrictions on Arabic language, audible calls to prayer, and the visible presence of Islamic identity within the community lays a foundation for more stringent restriction. When observing the expansion of the Xinjiang model of policing ethnic and religious practice, we ought to also consider what the ramifications of these tactics are. As such, the latter point above-- that basic aspects Islamic practice is out of line with Chinese culture is one worth reflecting upon. These prohibition cast ordinary daily habits as beyond what is permissible in the eyes of the state. The CCP justifies these measures as necessary for combating extremist ideologies that would jeopardize China's security and stability. The CCP argues that it takes steps to regulate religion and ethnic identity in order to prevent "Arabicization" and "Saudification." But scrutinizing these actions presents a different picture entirely.
Examining the kinds of practices that the CCP considers taboo reveals that the party-state is banning not the actions of militants or extremists. Instead, what the state attempts to police are the daily practices of normal life: diet, speech, prayer. Banning Arabic branding on foodstuffs does little combat extremist ideology. It does, however, discourage daily identification of Islam. Prohibiting students from learning to read basic Arabic has little impact on radicalism. Instead, it does adversely impact the ability of average lay believers to practice their faith. Prohibting the call to prayer from sounding in majority Islamic communities like Linixa does little to ensure greater national security. It does, however, erase the Islamic character of the public space.
Upon examination, then, the CCP's intent is to curb daily expressions of Islam. The actions being policed are mainstream practice undertaken by normal people in ordinary observance of faith or ethnic custom. By making ordinary gestures and practices in the course of daily life a taboo-- one worthy of banning or sanction, the CCP asserts that only it may serve as the arbiter for correct spiritual practice. Doing so sets a dangerous precedent that religious communities must conform to the dictates of the state. In September, Xi's official Weibo account tweeted "The aim of liberating thought is to better standardize thought." As James Leibold points out, Xi previously declared in a 2014 speech, "we shouldn't continue with what is rotten but rather discard the dross and select the essence; weed out the chaff to bring forth new roots" ("更不是连同糟粕全盘保留，而是要去粗取精、推陈出新."). What's clear here is that Xi's vision of China is one that stresses conformity even in the most minute of daily actions. Given the way that the CCP continues to repress and control quotidian expressions of Islamic faith, it is hard to see how Hui communities can abide by even the party's own dictate to "Love your country, Love your faith (爱国爱教)." Many Hui respondents I interviewed in the field expressed a strong devotion to faith that fit perfectly alongside their love of their country. The party-state's crackdown makes such a stance nearly untenable. That such small things as daily habits may be considered extremist is foreboding for the continued cultural vibrancy of of China's ethnic minority peoples. That the model employed in Xinjiang which targeted expression of Uyghur culture is now being studied by Ningxia should give all of us cause for concern.