Muslims in Contemporary China

In modem China, these problems are further compounded by new considera­tions that derive from novel circumstances:

1. Unlike other minority groups, such as the Mongols, the Tibetans and the Chuang, the Muslims are not attached to any particular territory, although they admittedly constitute a majority in areas such as Ninghsia and Sinkiang and a very sizeable minority in Kansu and Yunnan.

2. Unlike other minority groups in China whose home base may be included in toto within the confines of the People’s Republic (e.g. Tibet), the Muslims, whose focus of identity remains with the universal umma of Islam, regard themselves as a Chinese branch of an alien culture, not a minority-guest culture in China. The daily validation of their membership in the universal umma is at the basis of Muslim ritual, and one of the ‘Pillars of Islam’ is the tenet of hadj, the pilgrimage to Mecca—the Holy Place of all Muslims.

3. Despite Chinese attempts to differentiate within the Muslim commun­ity in China between the Hui of China proper, the Uighurs of Sinkiang and the other Turkic minorities of Central Asia—Uzbek, Kirghiz and Kazakh—a general sentiment of Islamic brotherhood unites, potentially if not practically, all those splinters into one living social and cultural group which, given certain circumstances, may seek political expression as well. However, as long as the divide et itnpera policy of the Chinese state prevails, the ethnic and linguistic differences between the Hui and the other Muslim groups in China are being cultivated in order to preclude the menace of an all-China Muslim front. Thus, when reference is made in state announce­ments to the population of Sinkiang, the purpose is to serve the policy of emphasising parochial peculiarities and to stem the rise of Muslim unity throughout the land.

4. Islam is not only a culture but also a totalistic way of life which inseparably encompasses politics and religion, and irrevocably strives to bring to bear the Islamic political theory; this carries with it the seeds of Muslim statehood. When a Muslim minority happens to live in a non­Muslim state, it remains in many ways outside that polity and nurtures separatistic ideals which can materialise when the opportunity presents itself.

5. More recently, because of the mounting power and wealth of some Islamic countries, Islam has become a success story. Moreover, the new institution of the Islamic Conferences, which have been convening yearly since 1969, has given a new impetus to popular, if not political, Pan-Islamic sentiments. One may conjecture that in the post-Gang of Four era, as China seems to be less rigid toward the outside world, Chinese Islam may be affected by these Pan-Islamic currents, and consequently by separatistic trends, as has been the case with other Muslim minorities in Asia (the Philippines, Thailand and Burma).

The above survey and analysis of the incongruencies between the guest Muslims and the host Chinese leave not much ground for optimism when one reflects upon the current plight of Muslims in China. Indeed, it appears that averting a Muslim minority uprising in China is possible only as long as a thin, and often precarious, balance can be main­tained between a strong-handed policy that does not encroach too bluntly upon the cultural-religious viability of the Muslims, and a liberal and gener­ous policy which remains short of total autonomy. Whether the Chinese newly adopted constitution was truly perceptive of these Islamic realities, and therefore provided for ‘giving back to ethnic minorities the right to pre­serve or reform their own customs and ways’, only time will tell. Previous pledges of national minority rights ‘to autonomy, to arm themselves and to hold on to their religious beliefs’, voiced by Chou En-lai, and Mao’s re­confirmation of their right to self-determination, had proved empty rhetoric.

Now, with powerful Teng Hsiao-p’ing at the helm of China, and in light of the wide open-door policy that has been adopted in the post-Gang of Four era, it is very likely that the international intercourse will affect the life of many Chinese, not least of all the minorities. The Muslim community in China will become ever more conscious of its Islamic identity if a freer movement of Muslims manifests itself between China and Muslim lands. Chinese Muslims will, no doubt, become more and more aware of the Muslim success story in the contemporary world, where mosques are sprouting in Washington, London, Geneva and even Seoul, on an unprecedented scale and with untold splendour. They will become con­scious of the legendary wealth wielded by some Islamic countries, not least of which are precisely those, like Libya, who have been backing Muslim separatist movements in other Asian lands (Thailand and the Philippines). They will take cognisance of the most powerful of all Islamic states, Saudi Arabia, where the Holy Places of Islam are located and where local sharifs claim descent from the Prophet himself. The holy pilgrimage to Mecca will regain a new impetus with a growing number of Muslim pilgrims making the journey, and some of them may even stay and settle there, if allowed, as had been the case with many of their compatriots who fled from China in the early 1950s.

In recent years, the enhanced stature of Islam has engendered a keener and deeper interest of the Muslim centre in the minorities of the periphery. This renewed interest manifests itself in the recurrent information printed in the Arabic press, and particularly in the resolutions adopted yearly by the Islamic Conferences, which have been meeting regularly since 1969, bringing under one roof delegates of forty-odd Muslim or self-styled Muslim countries, representing over eight hundred million people.

The recognition by the Marcos government of the Philippines of the Islamic Conferences as a partner for negotiating the auton­omy of the ‘Moros’; and the Filipino ‘going to Canossa’ (Libya) to discuss the terms of the autonomy, in 1977, only gave legitimacy to the earlier decision by the Conference calling upon the Filipino government to halt its military operations against the Muslims and adopt the necessary measures for the immediate withdrawal of its troops (from Filipino sovereign territory!) and honour its commitment to grant autonomy to Muslims in the southern Philippines.

In today’s world, where there prevails a universal reluctance to antagonise Muslims, converging with China’s new liberal policies towards the minorities, circumstances may well allow, and indeed demand, a renewed Muslim awakening in the PRC. We have already observed that too brutal pressures on Muslims or, paradoxically, too lax measures may well bring about the same result: more reticence on the part of the Muslims to adapt to the Communist Chinese rule. A difference exists none the less in the likely end results: while under extreme oppression the Muslims (like other minorities) may rebel and call for secession, they are also liable to be ruthlessly suppressed (e.g. the case of Tibet, Ch’inghai and Sinkiangin 1958-9), and Western public opinion might keep silent, or at least helpless about it, out of consideration for China’s defence of her ‘territorial integrity’. If, however, demands for secession arise under a liberalised and more open system, the Chinese would have so much stake in maintaining world public opinion on their side (see the case of dissidents in the USSR), that they might well have to respond to Muslim demands for a looser definition of autonomy.

If the cleavages among the Chinese leadership during the Cultural Revolution on matters of minority policy are instructive as a precedent, it is evident that the experienced administrators (‘experts’) usually favoured concessions to customs and traditions of minorities, while the ideological zealots (‘reds’) professed an immediate and total integration of these groups. The Gang of Four’s ‘red’ policy towards minorities had already expressly come under fire, well before March 1978, and an ‘expert’ pledge of the new People’s Congress was heard to restore minority rights. If it is true that Teng Hsiao-p’ing, the strong man of the PRC (or his hand-picked successors for that matter) is willing to ‘strive for modernization at a greater cost to the core values of the Revolution’, then he might conceivably also be prepared to pay the price of a relaxed policy towards Muslims (and minorities in general), as a correlative cost of modernisation and liberalisation. It would be again paradoxical that non-doctrinaire statesmen such as Teng (or his disciples and proteges) would be the men to restore Marxist doctrine on the minorities to its original thrust.