CHAPTER ONE

“GOD IS A DRUG”

Ethnic Politics in the Xi Jinping Era

Across the street from Beijing's venerable Niu Jie Mosque, a long banner sits atop a high wall and stretches the length of a block. At the far end, in vertical text, white characters that read “The Great United Family of Minzu” (minzu tuanjie da jia ting) stand out against the plain blue background. As the banner unfolds down the street, it depicts a man and woman from each of China’s fifty-six minzu dressed in traditional costumes. Some dance and play instruments; others hold the tools needed for the timehonored livelihoods of hunting, herding, or harvesting. All smile brightly in joyous celebration of a united homeland.¹ The Han are pictured at the center of the wall, surrounded by all of China’s minority minzu. Like the others, they don bright costumes and celebrate the diversity and vibrancy of the nation.²

Portraying the Han and ethnic minorities as joyfully living together in peaceful harmony under the leadership of the CCP casts them as contented, willing members of China’s large multiethnic family and legitimates the Party’s rule.³ These images of jubilant harmony among all ethnic groups highlight China’s status as a vibrant, diverse, multiethnic society. Depicting minorities engaged in song and dance renders them exotic, colorful, and flourishing under the Party’s benevolent and tolerant governance.⁴ Such rosy depictions of interethnic relations closely mirror the State Council’s official rhetoric: “Although the origins and histories of ethnic groups in China are different, the overall trend of their development was to form a unified, stable country with multiple ethnic groups. The boundaries and territory of today’s China were developed by all ethnic groups in the big family of the Chinese nation during the long course of historical development.”⁵

Nearly three hundred miles away, outside of Shandong’s capital city of Jinan, a message on another wall displayed a very different picture of interethnic relations. In Laozhaicun, a small, mostly Hui suburban village, located on the edge of the city’s Tianqiao District, the words “God is a drug” (renzhu duyi) appear as crudely scrawled black spray-painted characters on the side of a home. During my visit to Laozhai in mid-December 2015, the respondent leading me through the village drew my attention to the graffiti, making sure to explain its significance as a bit of anti-Hui ethnic chauvinism. The phrase, he explained, was meant as a homophone for the shahada (qingzhen yan), the Islamic declaration of faith: “There is but one God” (renzhu duyi).⁶ By switching the homophone du 毒 for du 独, the graffiti belittled the Muslim Hui. Such an act, my contact reasoned, could have been made only by Han from the neighboring village.

The virulent language of the vandalism echoes a hostility toward religion similar to that which is expressed by the CCP. Harkening back to the beginning of the PRC in 1949, the official statements made by the Party regarding religion suggest that, while free practice of faith is to be tolerated, religion itself is fundamentally false and dangerous to society.⁷ The foundational “Document 19,” a treatise on religion published by the Party in 1982, proclaims that bourgeois capitalists “use religion as an opiate and as an important and vital means in its control of the masses.”⁸ The same enmity toward religion voiced by official memos also informs the slur defacing the wall in Laozhai. Instances of bigotry like this were common, my guide remarked. Frequent competition between the predominantly Hui residents of Laozhai and the Han from neighboring villages, usually over contracting or land-use rights, sparked antipathy between the groups, sometimes resulting in ethnically motivated vandalism.⁹

While the smiling, jubilant minorities shown in propaganda suggest harmonious relations among all groups, the slurs scribbled out in coarse graffiti reveal the enduring prejudices directed toward China’s ethnic minorities. Rhetorical claims about the unity and indivisibility of the Chinese state, like those depicted on the Niu Jie mural and made on official records by the State Council, form a critical piece of the legitimating strategy employed by the CCP. Proclaiming stable and familial relations for all of China’s ethnic groups allows the Party to position itself as the guardian of China’s growth and prosperity. In so doing, the CCP aims to exert control in ethnic politics by minimizing grounds for conflict between itself and minorities and redirecting contentious politics that would challenge the Party’s narratives of unity and harmony.

However, the persistence of inequality between the Han and minority groups, of casual Han chauvinism, and of the kind of bigotry that gives rise to the anti-Hui graffiti found in Laozhai belies the hollowness of these claims. While the CCP touts its role in fostering economic progress and social harmony shared by all of China’s minzu, sharing in these public goods requires acculturation on the part of minorities. Instead of showcasing tolerance and ethnic unity, the daily instances of prejudice experienced by ethnic minorities reveal a continued stigmatization and othering of non-Han Chinese. Ordinary Han-Hui interactions are marked by physical and cultural separation that results in stereotyping, discrimination, and resentments that highlight the hollowness of the CCP’s minzu policies and legitimating claims and the precariousness of the Party’s control.

The everyday negotiation of Hui ethnic identity occurs against a background of policy, politics, and interethnic relations. Examining the CCP’s policies and rhetoric illustrates how official discourse attempts to constrain ethnic expression by filtering it through a state-approved lens. Creating this framework in which the negotiation of ethnic boundaries unfolds provides the CCP with the ability to oversee and manage ethnic politics in a way that reinforces its legitimating narratives of the Party as a guarantor of societal stability. Daily experiences of prejudice, however, disrupt and discredit this narrative. Exploring daily interactions between Hui and Han—and by proxy the Han-centric state—allows for a clearer picture of when interethnic relations matter and when they do not. Though tensions between Hui and Han rarely rise above the level of stereotyping and micro-aggressions, persistent gaps between state narratives about the equity of all minzu and the daily lived experiences of prejudice between Han and Hui may raise the salience of ethnic identity. In both cases, an overview of the general state of interethnic relations helps to illustrate the ways in which the CCP attempts to implement control over ethnic expression and how the everyday negotiation of Hui ethnic identity fits into the larger picture of ethnic politics under authoritarian regimes.

ETHNICITY AND AUTHORITARIAN LEGITIMATION IN THE XI JINPING ERA

Understanding the importance of interethnic relations for the CCP’s strategy requires an examination of the way authoritarian regimes construct and invoke legitimating narratives. By imposing categories of ethnicity and placing hard boundaries around official definitions of ethnic identity, the CCP makes ethnic registration and categorization an essential part of its strategy for governance and control. The state’s official categories provide a background against which the everyday negotiation of identity unfolds. Thus, understanding the social and political significance of quotidian expressions of Hui identity necessitates an examination of the Party’s “politics of categories.” Studying how categories are formulated, cataloged, imposed, and maintained by the state allows us to better understand whether and why actors accept or reject the state’s categories, where state policy meets resistance, and how debates over identity change in response to stateimposed measures.¹⁰

The CCP’s conduct of ethnic politics is intimately connected to concerns for preserving the societal stability (wending) that bolsters the regime’s legitimating claims. As the effectiveness of other legitimating narratives declines, the Party increasingly emphasizes its role as a guarantor of a stable, harmonious domestic atmosphere. The CCP’s overriding concern for stability causes “seepage,” wherein a fixation on a single concern effectively reorients the regime’s resources, messaging, and interpretation of social phenomena such that all matters become focused on addressing the issue.¹¹

The current seepage surrounding the politics of stability is the culmination of a trend begun under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping as the CCP sought new legitimating narratives in the aftermath of the Mao era (1949–76). Deng staked the CCP’s right to rule on its ability to improve China’s economic state. Thereafter, the Party’s leadership proclaimed a performancebased model of legitimacy as the pursuit of a xiaokang shehui (variously translated as “comfortable society” or “moderately prosperous society”), which became a central pillar of the legitimating narrative during the subsequent Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao administrations.¹²

While economic performance remains a cornerstone of the regime’s legitimating claims under the Xi Jinping administration (2012–present), the CCP also increasingly invokes its role as guardian of social stability and national unity to bolster its arguments for rightful control, insisting that it alone can provide the order that allows for China’s prosperity.¹³ By linking stability and prosperity together, the Party poses each as the necessary precondition for the other. Such logic is best expressed through the slogan that positions “development as an unyielding principle and stability as nonnegotiable responsibility.”¹⁴ The Party’s legitimating claims rely upon its selfpresentation as the only actor capable of presiding over both the governance of the state and the guidance of the economy without losing control or allowing the country to lapse into disorder.¹⁵ Moreover, the regime links stability and economic growth to the restoration of China’s position as a world power.¹⁶ Consequently, the Party’s concern for order becomes an overriding prerogative that drives policy formation and implementation across countless aspects of regime governance.¹⁷

While the regime construes stability broadly, any understanding of the term necessarily encompasses proper maintenance of ethnic relations. The CCP implements a web of interconnected policy measures in order to manage and oversee the politics of ethnic identity. Interethnic relations in China occur in the context of a system of ethnic categorization that regulates the expression of ethnic identity, referred to as the minzu system.¹⁸ Under this system fifty-six groups are officially recognized as minzu by the state.¹⁹ Minzu status is defined with the use of criteria derived primarily from a similar system implemented by Stalin in the former Soviet Union but also influenced by systems put in place by the British in colonial India.²⁰ The minzu system demands that an ethnic group possess the “four commons”: a common language, a common territory, a common economic life, and a common “psychological make-up,” which has been reinterpreted by the state to mean a common culture.²¹ Despite that fact that, even in the earliest stages of ethnic classification, state-sponsored taxonomists only loosely adhered to these “four commons,” they nonetheless remain as the Party’s official criteria for recognizing a minzu identity.²²

By officially investing the state with the power to classify ethnicity, the CCP attempts to assert control over the expression of ethnicity and reinforce narratives that downplay ethnic resentments or cause for conflict with the state. In offering minorities a state-sanctioned version of ethnic identity, the state allows for the expression of “permissible forms of difference” while also precluding competing versions that might conflict with state interests.²³ Gaining control over official expression of the content of a group’s identity also allows the state to control the territory these groups inhabit, a matter of crucial importance to state security and survival.²⁴ Placing the power to supervise and manage this categorization system in the hands of the state allows the regime to harness the positive capabilities of minority collective action. Thus, since the beginning of the era of Reform and Opening, China has made great efforts to encourage people to identify as minorities and revive the perpetuation of minority ethnic culture.²⁵

China’s political leaders take great care to link successful ethnic policy with the country’s overall security. The Party leadership views the insecurity stemming from occasional ethnic unrest, especially in Xinjiang and Tibet, as a threat to derail the CCP’s ability to trumpet the accomplishments of Xi’s “China Dream,” campaign.²⁶ These worries about the potential of ethnic conflict to contribute to the PRC’s unraveling are shared by Xi himself; writings from his early career urgently connect proper management of ethnic policy to China’s survival.²⁷ In 2014, on a visit to Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region following attacks in Kunming and Ürümchi, Xi stressed that proper management of ethnic politics formed an integral part of the security of the nation as a whole, and he urged the importance of interethnic exchange and integration.²⁸

Accordingly, preventing the outbreak of unrest in ethnic minority regions and maintaining the stability viewed as necessary for continued economic and military security are primary objectives of the Xi administration. Party leaders believe that China’s ascent into a “rich and strong country” ( fumin qianguo) relies on establishing stable ethnic relations and the extension of development to impoverished, peripheral, minority-populated regions.²⁹ Rhetorically including minorities as a part of Zhonghua minzu (variously translated as “Chinese nationalities” or “the Chinese race”) attempts to make them citizens of the Chinese state rather than subordinates of the majority Han nation.³⁰ In so doing the Party enacts a kind of forcible inclusion of minorities into the framework of the state and stakes a claim to being the sole guardian of their well-being.³¹

To curb the threat of tensions in ethnic communities leading to more widespread destabilization, Xi’s administration has expressed the necessity of aligning ethnic minority culture with the goals of the state. Though an increasingly prominent group of scholars and officials, most notably Ma Rong, Hu Lianhe, and Hu Angang, argue that the best way to achieve this integration is to dismantle the system of ethnic differentiation and affirmative action policies that encourage multiculturalism in order to form an integrated and homogeneous race-state (guozu), the Party had, until the early stages of the Xi administration, sought to exert control over the expression of minority identity through a system of ethnic classification.³² The minzu system of ethnic classification allows the state to oversee the expression of ethnicity by controlling census categories, determining which ethnic practices are official markers of ethnic identity, and reducing minority culture to “certain permissible forms of difference,” which fit in a state-approved framework.³³

“ALLOW THE FLOWERS OF ETHNIC UNITY TO BLOOM EVERYWHERE”: ETHNICITY, CONTROL, PROPAGANDA, AND LEGITIMATION UNDER XI JINPING

The minzu system is the culmination of a long-standing effort to incorporate minorities into the Chinese state.³⁴ Indeed, promises of official recognition and governmental autonomy made by the CCP to minorities on China’s periphery during the Long March period of the Chinese Civil War (approximately 1932–33) aided the Communists in winning minority support against the Nationalists. Extending these offers to groups unrecognized by the Nationalists, whose official minority categorization system recognized only five groups, made up a critical part of the CCP’s early “united front” strategy for ethnic governance.³⁵ The Party’s goal of reestablishing control over former imperial territory is apparent in these overtures.

Maintaining the vast and diverse—both territorially and ethnically—geobody of the former Qing Empire requires the current regime to invoke a larger notion of Chineseness that implies multiculturalism, harmony, and equality under the Party’s leadership. The ultimate result is a “mestizo-like” notion of Chinese civilization.³⁶

These metaphors of a “family” of Zhonghua minzu are reinforced by extensive government “minzu publicity” (minzu xuanchuan) campaigns, which emphasize the indivisibility of the ethnic peoples of China and downplay notions of ethnic conflict.³⁷ In this way, the CCP uses “cultural management” in an attempt to mitigate the cultural tensions that adversely affect China’s sociopolitical stability.³⁸ Posters prominently placed in public spaces within minority neighborhoods urge cooperation and harmony in relations among China’s many ethnic groups. In Qinghai’s Tibetan and Hui community of Lusha’er (known in Tibetan as Rushar) outside of Xining, such signs boldly proclaimed, “Ethnic minorities cannot be separated from the Han, and the Han cannot be separated from ethnic minorities. All minorities are mutually inseparable.”³⁹ Similarly, a billboard behind Lanzhou’s Great Western Mosque proclaimed, “A unified homeland revitalizes China.”⁴⁰

By tying China’s geographic and social unity to its economic prosperity, the CCP positions itself as the guardian of the state’s borders and its people, as well as their economic well-being. A billboard near the Dongguan Mosque in Xining emphasized the necessity of ethnic unity for sustaining prosperity: “All nationalities strive together in unity, and develop together prosperously.”⁴¹ The message being conveyed is clear: without the CCP to maintain a unified China, prosperity and economic growth cannot occur. China’s wealth and safety rely on the continued participation of minorities in the state under the leadership of the Party. To hold together this diverse “family” of Chinese peoples, official propaganda implores citizens to build “ethnic unity” (minzu tuanjie). Various signs throughout the ethnically diverse city of Xining announce, “Ethnic unity builds a better home,” “Let everyone follow the model of ethnic unity and allow the flowers of ethnic unity to blossom everywhere,” and “Let the blossoms of ethnic unity eagerly bloom.”⁴²

Slogans promoting equality and harmony attempt to reduce grounds for conflict with the state and reinforce a narrative about the Party’s provision of stability. However, persistent prejudice and unequal treatment in daily interactions hollow out these claims and potentially undermine the Party’s strategy for management and control. While interethnic contact that occurs through regular, associational channels may provide a means for mitigating instances of conflict, limited or negative contact may cause relations between groups to steadily worsen.⁴³ Repeated negative contacts may lead to hardening of boundaries between groups and contribute to a cycle wherein further exclusion breeds further mistrust.⁴⁴ These experiences of prejudice raise the salience of external boundaries between Hui and Han and highlight the CCP’s failures to deliver on its promises of unity.

The CCP’s rhetoric and policies surrounding ethnicity do not foster such positive associational contact, instead fostering feelings of prejudice and instances of discrimination. Though the PRC Constitution establishes the equality of all Chinese citizens, critics assert that such guarantees are inflected with condescending Han chauvinism.⁴⁵ By laying bare the regime’s inability to deliver on its promises of equality and shared stakes in the state’s prosperity, such instances of discrimination discredit the state-sponsored rhetoric that proclaims the Party’s role as a purveyor of prosperity and stability. In assessing the efficacy of the regime’s stability management (weiwen) tactics, the CCP’s paranoia about losing legitimacy spurs the Party to use a heavy hand in employing stabilizing measures, often violating the law in the process. The more the regime enforces stability maintenance, the more unstable society becomes.⁴⁶ Likewise, the more effort the CCP expends in trumpeting a message of minzu tuanjie, harmony, and family-like relations, the more the daily experiences of prejudice and discrimination undercut the regime’s legitimating claims.

Discrepancies between regime narratives and lived reality undercut the CCP’s efforts to manage interethnic politics by drawing points of conflict away from the state—which is largely viewed as Han-centric. Prejudices encountered in daily life increase the salience of boundaries between majority and minority, thus increasing the likelihood of tensions along ethnic lines. In the most extreme cases, this increase in salience gives rise to contentious politics and occasionally violence. Further, CCP attempts to intervene and restrict ethnic expression to squelch tensions may provoke further conflict. The well-publicized resistance to the CCP—and the Party’s heavyhanded and frequently violent suppression in response—in the minority autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang illustrates this potential quite clearly.⁴⁷

However, even in far less contentious cases, disjuncture between the regime’s rhetoric and daily realities exposes the precariousness of the Party’s management style. The Hui enjoy a reputation as a thoroughly integrated, “model religious minority,” often described in news articles as “stateapproved” Muslims.⁴⁸ However, a closer examination of Han-Hui relations indicates a continued, pervasive cultural and physical separateness between Han and Hui. Though some assert that Hui have achieved near total integration with Han, evidence suggests continued misunderstanding and resentment between the groups.⁴⁹ The persistence of prejudice between Han and Hui underlines the regime’s lack of success in delivering on its promises of promoting minzu tuanjie.

Mutual ignorance between Han and Hui stemming from lack of substantive intergroup contact creates mutual prejudice and suspicion. By raising the salience of boundaries between majority and minority, such mistrust erodes the Party’s ability to minimize contentious politics and maintain control.

Indeed, prior to sweeping nationwide crackdowns on Islam and Muslim minorities begun in 2017, the CCP presented the Hui as a highly assimilated minzu. Such thorough incorporation of the Hui into Chinese society provided the CCP with a major narrative victory, given the Hui’s history of resistance to central authority prior to the establishment of the PRC.⁵⁰ After the founding of the People’s Republic, the CCP made great efforts to co-opt Hui leadership into collaboration with the state.⁵¹

Though these attempts mostly succeeded, one incident of violence, the 1975 Shadian Incident (Shadian shijian), merits mention. Violence erupted in the overwhelmingly Hui stronghold of Shadian in Yunnan in July 1975 after years of simmering tensions, stemming initially from resentments over Red Guard attempts to suppress Islam in the village. As early as 1968, Red Guard units tried to rid the village of “feudal” Islamic practices by force, including, by some accounts, closing or vandalizing mosques, subjecting residents to struggle sessions, forcing them to eat pork, and requiring them to wear pigs’ heads around their necks.⁵² As strife between villagers and the Party intensified over the ensuing years, the community came under scrutiny. In 1974, nearly eight hundred villagers demonstrated in the provincial capital of Kunming to appeal to the state to honor its constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and were labeled a “disturbance.” In the wake of these protests, small-scale clashes broke out between a self-appointed local Islamic militia and the county government’s military administration. These conflicts led to an abortive attempt at negotiation between the parties orchestrated by Beijing in early 1975. Under orders from the central government, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) arrived in summer 1975 to restore state authority and end a tax protest undertaken by local villagers. By late July, after negotiations had deteriorated further, the PLA surrounded and besieged the village.⁵³ On July 29, the PLA entered the village, beginning a lengthy pitched battle that claimed 1,600 lives and destroyed as many as 4,400 houses.⁵⁴ Eyewitnesses recount the use of heavy artillery to subdue the villagers. Some attest to the PLA’s use of fighter jets on the village.⁵⁵ Eventually, in 1979, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, blame for the incident fell on the deposed Gang of Four.⁵⁶ As restitution, the government sponsored massive projects of rehabilitation and reconstruction in Shadian and memorialized the victims with a marker to the martyrs (shexide for the Arabic shahid).⁵⁷ In the ensuing years, Shadian grew into a prosperous, devoutly Islamic community that marketed itself to the outside world as the center of China’s Islamic revival. The Grand Mosque, reputedly one of the largest in China, is the centerpiece of the community.⁵⁸

Shadian’s revival in the 1990s and 2000s illustrates the CCP’s approach toward the Hui in the era of Reform and Opening, wherein the Party began to tout the Hui as a model Islamic minority.⁵⁹ In recent years, the relationship between Hui communities and the state has garnered increased attention in international media, particularly as a contrast to the more restive and conflictual relations between the PRC and Uyghur communities.⁶⁰

Especially in the period after the announcement of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (yidai, yilu) in 2013, the regime’s frequent citing of the Hui as an example of an Islamic minority living contentedly and cooperatively under the leadership of the CCP illustrates the importance of the Hui to the CCP’s legitimating strategy, both domestically and abroad. The Hui occupy a median position on the civilizational spectrum between the two poles of Islamic and Chinese spheres.⁶¹ As an imam in Xining explained, “Hui culture is like the child of two major cultures: Chinese culture and Islamic culture. Chinese culture is our mother culture, and Islamic culture is like our father culture. Even if we are currently closer to mother culture, the father culture is most important. We can’t forget this father culture.”⁶² This position of in-betweeness made the Hui symbolically important as cultural envoys in the CCP’s attempts to court the larger Islamic world. Likewise, Hui communities have been the beneficiaries of extensive outreach and funding from Muslim-majority states—particularly Saudi Arabia—hoping to promote the growth of faith and Islamic identity.⁶³

While a number of minzu, such as the Miao, Bai, Yao, and Naxi, also represent relatively successful conduct of interethnic politics on the part of the CCP, the shared linguistic and cultural heritage of the Hui and Han and the Hui’s ties to the international Islamic community make the Hui a revealing case. Further, the centrality of the Hui to the Party’s claims of providing unity and equality provides an ideal case for illustrating the tenuousness of the regime’s ability to maintain control over ethnic politics.

FIGURE 1.1. Mural at the Great Mosque in Najiahu in both Chinese and Arabic: “Love your country, love your faith. Know the law, abide by the law.”

“LOVE YOUR COUNTRY, LOVE YOUR FAITH”: HAN-HUI RELATIONS THROUGH AN OFFICIAL LENS

State propaganda paints a picture of the Hui as eager participants in the Chinese nation. Signs at mosques throughout northwest China encourage patriotic behavior. In 2016, a mural at the Great Mosque of Najiahu in Yongning County, Ningxia, implored its congregants, “Love your country, love your faith. Know the law, abide by the law” (see figure 1.1).⁶⁴ Since 2017, when a nationwide crackdown on religious expression in Muslim communities began, the CCP changed many such signs to display an even more patriotic slogan: “Love Your Country, Love the Party” (aiguo aidang).⁶⁵ In Xining, a banner at a small mosque to the north of the city’s Hui Quarter urges residents to be a bulwark against terrorism by beseeching, “Don’t let terrorism destroy ethnic unity and society stability!”⁶⁶ Messages like these that emphasize the Chinese citizenship of the Hui as coequal to their membership in the Islamic community of faith (umma) suggest that in the officially sanctioned understanding of Hui identity, the group’s religious and civic identities overlap and do not conflict. In this sense, the government presents the Hui as a compliant, exemplary group, not prone to religious extremism or separatist tendencies.

Likewise, official sites of Hui culture strive to portray the Hui as key contributors to the development of modern China and the establishment of the PRC. At the Ningxia Provincial Museum, an explanatory sign states, in English, that the Hui “are just as patriotic as they once were with their beliefs remain unchanged [sic]!” In the same exhibit another sign proclaims, “We welcome and embrace this group with firm belief and with striking characteristics, which, in the time-honored process of development has well blended with the age-old Chinese civilizations,” suggesting that widespread assimilation is a natural outcome of development.⁶⁷

The Hui Culture Park in Najiahu, a predominantly Hui suburb to the south of Yinchuan, devotes two of its five exhibit halls to “contributions of the Hui ethnic group to Chinese civilization.” The English-language introductory signs to these exhibits proclaim, “The Hui ethnic group’s progress and development is consistently associated with the fate of the Chinese nation” and assert that the Hui “defended their national dignity courageously” and were “devoted to rejuvenating the Chinese nation.” Displays that feature biographies of prominent Hui revolutionaries who fought alongside the CCP in its campaign against the Japanese and Nationalist armies, and Hui thinkers who contributed to the consolidation of the current PRC, stand next to these signs. Sweeping aside Hui such as the notorious warlord Ma Bufang (1903–1975), who fought alongside the Nationalists, such exhibits uncritically emphasize the commitment of the Hui as Chinese patriots.⁶⁸ Any historical troubles are pushed aside, while the Hui are presented as willing and eager participants in the founding of the new Chinese state.⁶⁹

Such characterizations of the Hui buttress claims that they are integrated into Chinese society, politically and culturally. In the minds of many Han, the assimilation and Sinicization of the Hui are all but complete. One young woman, a Han university student studying Chinese Islamic architecture in Yinchuan, remarked that no tensions existed between Han and Hui. Asked why she believed this, she offered only the simple explanation “The Hui have already been Han-ified.”⁷⁰

HAN IGNORANCE AND HUI STEREOTYPES: THE HUI AS CARICATURED IN DAILY INTERACTIONS

Ignorance of Islam and its influence on the daily life of practicing Muslims often clouds Han perceptions of Hui culture. For example, Han tourists visiting the Hui Culture Park in Najiahu expressed confusion about the manner of observance and purpose of the Ramadan fast in the rudimentary questions they posed to the young Hui woman serving as their tour guide. “But don’t you get hungry?” many inquired, prompting a patient, if slightly annoyed, retort from the guide that faith allowed her to endure such difficulty. Later, at the park’s replica prayer hall, the Han guests removed their shoes, donned head coverings, and knelt on the floor in simulation of prayer while a young Hui man gave an introductory talk. “Han visitors often ask me why we Hui do not eat pork,” he remarked, adding that they often want to know if it is because “pigs are the Hui’s ancestors.”⁷¹ The guide’s speech, which explained other rudimentary elements of a Muslim lifestyle, such as dressing modestly and not partaking in alcohol, illustrated just how little knowledge the Han tourists possessed about Islam.

Prior to the onset of the de-Islamification campaign, museum displays reinforced such caricatures. Before its closure for renovation in mid-2015, the Hui Culture Park’s museum greeted visitors with a twenty-minute film explaining the Hui and Hui culture, portraying them as a rural, agrarian, or pastoral people. The film’s depictions of Hui traditions, food, ceremonies, and music all centered on Hui living in the countryside and paid little attention to urban Hui communities.⁷² Likewise, in early 2016, at the Hui exhibit at the Ningxia Provincial Museum, a series of miniature dioramas of rural Hui villages presented illustrations of Hui lifestyle practices, including prayer, weddings, and harvest.

At the exit of the exhibit, visitors confronted a display featuring life-size mannequins of a Hui family wearing ethnic costumes. A mother and father sat together while their two children played traditional instruments on the floor. The father read the Qur’an while the mother sewed.⁷³ By showing only scenes of rural life, these tableaux failed to capture the experiences of urban Hui or showcase a strong tradition of Hui scholasticism and theology. Each of these portrayals neglected significant in-group geographic, socioeconomic, and cultural diversity and instead reduced Hui culture to a single, easily stereotyped dimension.

Han interaction with Hui culture beyond these official museum displays reveals a similar lack of substance. Due to increased rates of internal migration from less prosperous western China to the wealthier eastern coastal regions, nearly every city in China—even those with historically small Hui populations—boasts restaurants serving qingzhen cuisine, usually bowls of lamian.⁷⁴ For many Han, eateries like these provide the most common point of contact with Hui culture, often depicted in caricature. At a noodle shop in the Hui Quarter of Jinan, for instance, a series of posters depicts cartoon Hui cooks, wearing traditional white Islamic prayer caps (baimaozi), as they happily stretch the dough for noodles, slice beef, and pour water for the soup’s broth. Some of the cartoons depict elderly men with long, wispy white beards.⁷⁵ A qingzhen restaurant inside the WanDa Plaza Mall in Yinchuan lures customers with two life-size mannequins of a man and woman wearing the “official” traditional ethnic costumes of the Hui depicted in state propaganda, sitting cross-legged on a carpet at a low table. The sign behind them reads, “Chat and eat noodles; rest and drink tea.”⁷⁶

Hui entrepreneurs doubtless find such caricatures useful in their pursuit of marketization and profit and thus employ them to suggest authenticity or novelty to Han consumers.⁷⁷ However, these depictions perpetuate a cartoonish and one-dimensional view of the Hui as pork-abstaining, bearded noodle makers in white hats. Such reductive stereotypes about Hui culture and the tenets of Islam seem due to the absence of associational or quotidian interaction between the Han and the Hui. Because lamian restaurants are the most common venue for most Han people’s interaction with Hui people and Hui culture, popular understandings of the community may never develop beyond such kitschy and skewed representations. Ignorance of the cultural traditions behind Hui diet and dress raises the possibility of micro-aggressions or more overt forms of discrimination in Han-Hui interactions.

While many Han understand that the Hui adhere to a dietary code that prohibits eating pork, they may misunderstand the foundations of these restrictions. A twenty-six-year-old Han woman in Jinan remarked, “We [Han] eat pork and they [Hui] don’t eat pork, and so this leads to a lot of difficulties.”⁷⁸ Though she never elaborated what such “difficulties” might entail, her irritation implied that menu choices were a source of arguments; she also betrayed her contempt for Hui who might refuse Han food. A thirty-two-year-old Han graduate student studying education in Yinchuan explained that, prior to visiting a Hui suburb for a class field trip, she had not understood why Hui practiced different lifestyles from Han. Only after speaking with Hui residents did she realize that they observed such different practices because they were following the dictates of Islamic law.⁷⁹ The Han owner of a dive bar in Yinchuan that advertised itself as a “qingzhen bar” displayed a similar lack of awareness of the religious foundations of the Hui dietary code. When asked how an establishment that served alcohol (which is expressly prohibited by Islam) could be considered qingzhen, he offered his own bizarre rationalization that the bar could be considered qingzhen because it was a place that was quiet and tranquil (qing) and served only “real” (zhen) imported beer from Europe and Singapore. Further questions revealed that he saw no problem with appropriating qingzhen to advertise his establishment.⁸⁰ Ignorance of even these most basic aspects of Hui lifestyle can lead to disrespect and conflict. A Jinan Hui respondent in his fifties explained, “They [Han] only understand a little bit and aren’t really clear [about the Hui]. And if they’re not really clear, it’s really easy to offend Hui, or show disrespect to Hui. For example, if you’re all eating together, you shouldn’t eat pork, but they share it with everyone. Stuff like that really easily starts fights.”⁸¹

SEPARATION AND PREJUDICE IN HAN-HUI RELATIONS

Physical separation contributes to this cultural distance between Han and Hui. Hui neighborhoods often stand apart from the rest of a city. A twentyeight-year-old Hui teacher from Jinan described her experience growing up in a small village on the edge of the city. A road ran through the village, dividing the east from the west. The western half of the village was inhabited exclusively by Hui; the eastern half exclusively by Han.⁸² In the town of Weizhou in Tongxin County, south of Yinchuan, residents estimated that Hui comprised 95 percent of the population and claimed that Han residents stayed for only short durations before moving elsewhere.⁸³ As such, Han frequently perceive these spaces to be overwhelmingly Hui, and thus avoid them.

In urban centers, such physical separation stands out even more clearly, as historically Hui neighborhoods stood apart from the core of cities.⁸⁴ Such separation often occurred as a result of the Hui’s tendency to cluster homes and businesses around a central mosque.⁸⁵ The insularity of these Hui enclaves makes them impenetrable to non-Muslim outsiders. Han residents of Jinan’s Dikou Lu, a large avenue near the city’s central train station, were almost completely oblivious to the existence of a small neighboring Hui enclave surrounding a historic mosque. Those Han living on nearby Wansheng Alley claimed to be unaware of the existence of the mosque and uncertain whether any Hui people lived nearby.⁸⁶

In Xining, the city’s primary Muslim enclave was historically separated from the core by city walls, segregating the community physically as well as by habit and custom.⁸⁷ Though the walls have since been razed, the boundaries they once demarcated remain salient as Xining’s contemporary street grid follows the path where they once stood. Most residents still recognize the city’s Chengdong District, which sits on top of the former Muslim city, as the Hui Quarter. A Hui graduate student in anthropology remarked that these neighborhood configurations still influence the course of daily life in Xining. While walking down Dongguan Da Jie, the large boulevard that lies at the core of the neighborhood, he said that, despite the close proximity of Xining’s many minority groups, interactions among them continue to be rare: “Han people rarely come to this part of the city.”⁸⁸ Those Han who do live in the area, he explained, often look for somewhere else to live. The Han tenants who previously rented the apartment in which his parents lived felt out of place in the neighborhood and were eager to leave the predominantly Hui enclave. The visibly Hui character of areas like the Chengdong District leads Han to feel alienated by their surroundings and may contribute to negative feelings about the neighborhood and those who live there. To the west of Dongguan Da Jie, the Hui population becomes scarce. “You rarely see people wearing white prayer hats or hijabs outside of this neighborhood,” the student observed.⁸⁹ Another Xining resident, a forty-three-year-old Hui professor of sociology, remarked that non-Hui regarded the Hui Quarter as backward, poor, and dirty:

The claims that Han looked negatively on Hui suzhi, or lack thereof, illustrates the standing of the Hui within larger social hierarchies that place urban, educated, middle-class Han in a central position. The association of Hanness with possession of suzhi mark those who are working class, migrants, or non-Han as socially backward and uncivilized “others.” Hui arriving in cities as migrants, like many of those who live in Xining’s Chengdong District, may feel doubly excluded, as both their rurality and their ethnicity carry markers of backwardness that lead to othering.⁹²

Respondents elsewhere echoed these claims that the Hui were stigmatized as poor and backward. One Beijing Hui respondent in his seventies grumbled that Han in the community looked down upon the Hui: “The Hui are an ethnic minority, and ethnic minorities are all poor, including the Hui. You can see that the jobs Hui have are all really bad. They all have small carts that sell nian gao [a kind of sweet snack] for one to two kuai a slice. This isn’t good work. You can’t earn money.”⁹³ Such economic disadvantage, the respondent implied, placed Hui in a position of perpetual weakness and marginalization and led Han to look down on them. Likewise, in Jinan, Han residents described the Hui Quarter as a “dirty, disorderly, and dilapidated” (zang, luan, cha) place. One Han respondent, a thirty-year-old English teacher from Jinan, admitted that her discomfort going into the city’s Hui Quarter came close to physical disgust: “The Hui don’t eat pork, and instead they eat lots of mutton. The smell of mutton really disgusts me, and so I feel that the Hui Quarter is just dirty and disorderly.”⁹⁴ The association of Hui with low-wage jobs and ethnic products caused Han respondents, like the English teacher, to associate the Hui Quarter—and its residents—with squalor and unpleasant, if not unsanitary, sights and smells.

Due to a substantial lack of knowledge and interaction, differences in culture, such as Hui avoidance of foods or lifestyle habits they deem “impure” ( feiqingzhen), are frequently interpreted by the Han as condescension or disdain. Perhaps giving credence to this perception, Hui often profess that, by consuming only that which is qingzhen, they are purer than Han.⁹⁵ To some Han, this showy observance of qingzhen becomes grating. For example, the twenty-six-year-old Han woman believed that the Hui treated the Han with high-handed contempt. Though she admitted to not truly understanding the reasons for the Hui’s lifestyle differences, she cited them as a sign of self-importance: “I just feel that the Hui are naturally a little arrogant. Which is to say, ‘I’m Hui. I’m a minority.’ They have that kind of attitude.”⁹⁶ The Han teacher echoed this: “In my view, Hui aren’t very friendly, especially toward Han. Hui are very friendly to other Hui, but in my view, Hui act a little superior.”⁹⁷ According to this respondent, the Hui took their status as a recognized minority as a sign of special status that they flaunted, particularly in their interactions with the Han.

Other Han complained that Hui used their special status to flout rules and regulations that Han would not be allowed to break. In so doing, some complained, Hui took advantage of the state’s tolerance. Han in Jinan expressed frustration that the Hui Quarter got away with ignoring many environmental and sanitary regulations because the government feared provoking a response along ethnic lines. Several respondents claimed that the local government hesitated in enforcing regulations or conducting urban renewal to remedy the neighborhood’s dilapidated state because of a fear that these actions would provoke Hui resistance. One Hui woman in her late twenties who ran a small English school in Jinan recalled that attempts by developers to buy land in the Hui Quarter failed because of fear that Hui might resist if they weren’t compensated at a higher price than market value.⁹⁸ One resident in the Jinan Hui Quarter lamented that the neighborhood’s problems with air pollution from barbecue smoke continued because the government would not dare enforce a ban on open-air grills in the neighborhood in order to avoid a riot by the Hui.⁹⁹ In both cases, respondents complained that the Hui used intimidating displays of solidarity to gain preferential treatment from local authorities seeking to assuage ethnic tensions. These instances provoked anger among Han, who felt that Hui acted as if they were exempt from following the rules due to their minority status.

Often these Han cited government policies favoring the Hui and other minorities for creating and promoting such feelings of superiority and entitlement. A middle-aged Han man who had grown up in Yantai, about three hours to the east of Jinan, described Han-Hui relations as marked by an elevated form of dislike stemming from governmental policies:

This respondent’s oblique reference to the government as the source of resentments points to the regime’s preferential policies (youhui zhengce) for minorities. A growing crowd of critics regards this broad array of policies—which include nominal autonomy in designated autonomous communities, limited subsidies for housing and farming, exemption from state familyplanning policies, and benefits in college entrance examinations—as perpetuating and exacerbating tensions between groups.¹⁰¹ A former head of the State Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee, Zhu Weiqun, expressed such sentiments in 2014, claiming that preferential treatment policies “make citizens aware of the differences between ethnic minorities,” thus promoting discord and antipathy rather than unity.¹⁰²

These resentments, which imagine the Hui as an advantaged, contemptuous, superior “other,” also give rise to notions that the Hui are clannish and unwelcoming. One woman, a Hui factory worker in her mid-forties who lived in the Hui Quarter, boasted, “We who live in this neighborhood are more unified than others because we’re all ethnic minorities.”¹⁰³ However, such displays of solidarity may be a coping mechanism. As one Hui respondent in Jinan explained, “There’s really nothing we can do [about prejudice]. We can only unify and deal with this ethnic bullying together.”¹⁰⁴ Because associational ties between Han and Hui are weak, actions that Hui regard as positive and indicative of the strength of their community, Han interpret as secretive, suspicious, and exclusionary.

While such expressions of solidarity and unity may strengthen the Hui community internally, outsiders often view such togetherness negatively. Han commenting on Hui unity expressed fear that such tribalism led Hui to gang up on and bully or intimidate the Han. The Hui sense of solidarity, many complained, resulted in every conflict between Han and Hui residents falling along ethnic lines, no matter what initially caused the quarrel. The Han English teacher remarked that whenever conflicts arise between Han and Hui in Jinan’s Hui Quarter, “Hui think of it as an ethnic problem. That neighborhood has a lot of Hui who will come help out other Hui.” For these Han, being outnumbered by Hui while visiting Hui communities led to discomfort, and for some, like the English teacher, a fear of danger. Fears that Hui ethnic solidarity would lead to their being outnumbered caused these Han to feel intimidated by Hui while in the neighborhood and contributed to their desire to avoid going there.

Resentments based on the Hui’s perceived clannishness and arrogance and the perception that they receive favorable treatment from the state because of their minority status, create the potential for conflict. In Laozhai village, a respondent claimed that tensions between the villagers often resulted in anti-Islamic vandalism. The previous year, he recounted, a dispute over contracting rights for the construction of a set of apartment towers between competing Han and Hui construction firms escalated into fullblown conflict when the Han nailed a pig’s head to the door of the residence of the foreman of the Hui team in the dead of night. In the end, the respondent noted, local Party officials intervened to prevent further escalation, siding with the Hui team, much to the chagrin of the rival Han team.¹⁰⁵ In Xining, a Hui respondent explained how Han provoked fights by using the Islamic taboo on pork as an epithet against the Hui: “[Pigs] are incredibly taboo. For example, some Han will swear at you by calling you Zhu HuiHui [literally, ‘Piggy Hui’ or ‘Hui Pig’] or something like that, and maybe you want to strike back, maybe even to the point of fighting. This is maybe a kind of subconscious effect.”¹⁰⁶

Instances of bigotry like these firmly challenge the assertion that while the Hui are certainly “familiar,” they are no longer “strangers.” Instead, they indicate that relations between urban Han and Hui residents remain marked by ignorance, separation, and prejudice. While many Han regard the Hui as assimilated, or essentially “Hanified,” gaps in understanding continue to perpetuate small resentments and suspicions between the groups. The lack of genuine knowledge about the Hui and resentment toward what they view as Hui privilege suggests that, to most Han, the Hui remain a distant “other.” Despite being held up as an integrated, model minority, the Hui remain “familiar strangers” in the eyes of many Han.

THE LIMITATIONS OF ETHNIC UNITY AS A LEGITIMATING NARRATIVE

As the self-proclaimed guardian of China’s national interest, the CCP hangs its legitimating claims on its ability to serve as a guarantor of prosperity and domestic stability. Providing stable interethnic relations is a crucial part of this climate of stability. While the rhetoric of the state may proclaim ethnic unity and mutual benefit for all peoples, the daily interactions between Han and Hui suggest a very different reality. The failure to deliver on the promise of stable, equal, prosperous interethnic relations poses a thorny problem for the regime. Such failure threatens not just the regime’s policies on ethnicity but its legitimation strategy more broadly. Routine experiences of discrimination and prejudice thwart the state’s attempts to use rhetoric and targeted programs of autonomy and preferential policies for minorities to reduce tensions with the state and create a climate of stability. These difficulties suggest that the CCP’s own interventions, which intend to reduce the salience of boundaries between ethnic groups and channel contentious politics away from the state, instead succeed in highlighting ethnic identity. Everyday prejudice throws the CCP’s policy failures into sharper relief, potentially redirecting grievances back toward the state and creating instability. Therefore, the CCP’s legitimation strategy falls short in two major respects.

First, many Han resent state policies they perceive as creating minority privilege and special treatment at the Han’s expense. These resentments revolve particularly around the slate of benefits awarded to Hui on the basis of minority status. Such antipathy is clearly exemplified by Han respondents who argued that Hui acted arrogantly or flaunted minority privilege. Han respondents expressed frustration over their perception that Hui acted as if minority status made them special or superior. Moreover, the complaints of Jinan residents about the local Party’s unwillingness to interfere in Hui neighborhoods reveal a belief on the part of many Han that the state treats minorities differently. Such frustration leads some Han to believe these policies contribute to a loss of Han culture.¹⁰⁷ These perceptions produce the very prejudice and ethnic resentment the Party seeks to avoid.

Second, the regime’s failure to deliver on the promises of unity and prosperity lays bare the discrepancies between Han and minorities. Despite preferential policies intended to tie minorities to the state and extensive campaigns emphasizing the indivisibility of Zhonghua minzu, the state’s actions risk raising the salience of boundaries, threatening destabilizing tension. Despite the regime’s insistence that all minzu “develop together prosperously,” persistent inequalities and prejudices undermine these claims. A lack of substantive contact between Han and Hui leads to the development of negative associations rooted in stereotypes. The stigmatization of the Hui Quarters in Jinan and Xining as poor and backward illustrates the unevenness of the benefits of China’s economic development and the failures of preferential policy or largely hollow rhetoric to overcome these gaps. As Hui continue to experience discrimination in their daily lives, the potential for conflict with the Han, and by proxy the state, increases. Further interventions by the state to suppress such conflict may inflame such tensions.

More damaging still are the occasional instances, like those in Laozhai, where micro-aggressions or petty instances of discrimination in interethnic relations lapse into more malicious incidents of vandalism or violence. The outbreak of such conflicts renders hollow the CCP’s claim that its leadership delivers harmony and stability to all minzu. If even the Hui, whom many in the Party and the public more generally consider to be a model minority, consistently experience this kind of discrimination, the CCP’s efforts to use propaganda or state-administered benefits to lessen the salience of boundaries between majority and minorities have been unsuccessful. Such incidences mar the CCP’s rosy picture of the various ethnicities of China coming together as the larger family of Zhonghua minzu and underline the precariousness of the CCP’s efforts to maintain control over ethnic affairs by downplaying contentious politics.