40 China The EconomistSeptember 28th 2019
2 and Persian traders who settled more than
a millennium ago. After centuries of inter-
marriage they have become ethnically as-
similated with Han Chinese, who make up
more than 90% of the population. Huis in
Linxia have historically played an impor-
tant role as middlemen in trade between
Tibetan and Han communities. Many have
grown rich by trading a Chinese medicine
that is often used as an aphrodisiac, known
as caterpillar fungus. It is harvested from
the Tibetan hills. Linxia is home to one of
the country’s biggest caterpillar-fungus
wholesale markets; its traders are mostly
Muslims.
But as the scaffolding in Duanjiaping
shows, the government worries that Mus-
lims in Linxia are absorbing the same in-
fluences from Islam abroad that it says
have fuelled strife in Xinjiang. “Right now,
work related to Islam is even more compli-
cated than it has ever been before,” Gansu’s
party chief, Lin Duo, told a meeting of se-
nior officials in July last year.Off with their domes
One aim of the sinicisation campaign is to
reduce visible links between Islam in Chi-
na and that in the Arab world. China fears
that Saudi Arabia in particular—as much a
draw to Muslim pilgrims in China as to
those elsewhere—will poison Chinese Is-
lam with Wahhabism, a puritanical strain
that is often linked with extremism. But its
efforts to prevent this are affecting many
Muslims who have no truck with militancy.
In March officials in the southern city of
Guangzhou announced rewards of up to
10,000 yuan ($1,405) for reporting on “ille-
gal religious activities”, including organis-
ing private trips to Mecca. China’s Muslims
can join only officially arranged ones.
The mosque in Duanjiaping is a casual-
ty. Officials have ordered it to remove its
Arab-style minarets and replace them with
Chinese-looking ones. A picture of what
the mosque will eventually look like is dis-
played in the entrance. The minarets will
have green-tiled upturned eaves in Chi-
nese style. The central bulbous dome will
be replaced by a pavilion-like structure,
also classically Chinese.
“The government says we have to do it,
so we’re doing it,” says a caretaker. The
work will not offend religious sensibilities
and will be done at the government’s ex-
pense, he claims. That contrasts with re-
ports from other places where similar work
is being carried out. In a nearby town,
Kangle, a nervous Hui surveys another
mosque with scaffolding on its minarets.
He says “trouble” broke out there a few days
earlier when local religious-affairs officials
ordered their demolition. They were erect-
ed in 2014. The following year the mosque
was named a “model religious site” by Lin-
xia’s government. No longer, it seems.
In August last year there was trouble ona much bigger scale in Ningxia Hui Auton-
omous Region, a province bordering on
Gansu that is home to about one-fifth of
China’s Hui people. For three days thou-
sands of Muslims in the town of Weizhou
staged protests at a massive mosque—ini-
tially over a government order that the en-
tire building be knocked down because it
had not received planning permission, and
subsequently over a revised proposal that
only the domes be removed. Remarkably,
the local government backed down. But it
was clearly worried about the turmoil. In
November the party chief of Ningxia visit-
ed Xinjiang, where he signed counter-ter-
rorism “co-operation agreements”. He not-
ed religious similarities between the two
provinces and said, ominously: “That’s
why Ningxia went to learn from Xinjiang.”
In Gansu the official Islamic Associa-
tion has circulated 20 recommended de-
signs for mosque roofs “with Chinese char-
acteristics”. Officials say they want no more
“Saudi-isation” or “Arab-isation” of build-
ings. The association has instructed Mus-
lims to forsake the common practice of
building or expanding mosques without
government permission and to make them
less “vast and extravagant”. It has also tried
to tighten its control over the religion it-
self. It has ordered Gansu’s teachers of Is-
lam to reject any new doctrine from outsid-
ers. “Anything that does not already exist at
home should not be accepted from abroad,”
said the association’s annual report, pub-
lished in March. “If something does not ex-
ist locally then it should not be approved if
it is introduced from elsewhere.”
Part of the sinicisation effort is called
the “four-enter” campaign. This means en-
suring that four things are introduced into
every mosque: the Chinese flag, propagan-
da concerning China’s laws on religion,
“core socialist values” and the country’s
“outstanding traditional culture”. In Lin-
xia, the impact is clear. The flag flies over
many mosques. Billboards proclaiming so-
cialism’s importance to Islam fill their
courtyards. Preachers have been told to in-corporate these values in their scriptural
teachings. And they must undergo regular
testing on such matters to retain their per-
mits to teach. Linxia’s party chief, Guo Heli,
tried to put a positive spin on the clamp-
down during a visit to local mosques in
June. “We must reduce the frequency, dura-
tion and scale of religious activities,” he
said, suggesting this would “lessen the
burden” on the faithful.
The authorities are also trying to reduce
Islam’s influence in society. In Linxia this
involves curbing the “proliferation” of the
use of the term “halal”. Provincial officials
have accused Linxia’s main city of “giving
too much prominence to religious aspects”
in its plans to expand the local halal-pro-
ducts industry. As part of the de-Arabisa-
tion campaign, officials have ordered res-
taurants to stop using the word “halal” in
Arabic on their signs, as many once did.
Only traces now remain. On many Muslim
restaurants across China, including re-
cently in Beijing, such lettering has been
painted over or prised out.
By changing the design of Duanjiaping’s
mosque officials may hope to reduce Is-
lam’s profile, just as officials on the coast
have been trying to make Christianity less
visible by removing hundreds of large
crosses from the tops of churches. In line
with regulations issued last year forbid-
ding the building of mosques that are
“overly tall”, the new minarets in Duanjia-
ping will be much lower. Mosques have
also been ordered to install less-powerful
loudspeakers. Officials have stepped up ef-
forts to keep children out of them and bar
minors from religious instruction.
The government’s controls over Islam
are still relatively relaxed in Linxia com-
pared with those in Xinjiang, where Mus-
lims, if they are not thrown into “voca-
tional training centres” (ie, prison camps),
are subject to intense digital surveillance, a
heavy police presence and intrusions into
their homes by prying officials. Many of
Linxia’s mosques retain their Arab-style
minarets (locals say they are cheaper to
build than Chinese-style ones, which re-
quire skilled carpenters and expensive
wood). Only a handful of mosques have so
far been told to rebuild theirs, says a local
Hui-culture expert. Extremism, he says,
“has not become a trend” locally.
But the authorities insist it is spreading.
In July the leader of a central-government
inspection team said that in some parts of
Gansu “religious extremist forces” were al-
ready “dominating and corroding” grass-
roots political bodies. This was, she said, “a
problem worth attention”. Extremist is a
word that trips lightly off officials’ tongues.
It is often used to describe behaviour that
in many other countries would be regarded
simply as devout. Muslims in the rest of
China may not suffer the Uighurs’ terrible
fate, but they have reason to be nervous. 7Lanzhou
Linxia Weizhou
DuanjiapingXinjiangNingxiaTibet TibetanplateauGansuMONGOLIARUSSIAINDIA
TAIWANCHINABeijingGuangzhou1,000 kmShareofChinese
Muslims,%
Byprovince,basedon
2010 total of 23.1m
Source: Census154.954.9
4.19.4
8.0