How Islamophobia Makes the Chinese a Less Diverse People
It is certainly difficult being an Uyghur these days. Not only is an Uyghur person constantly subject to racial profiling and intense surveillance by the state in China, but the Chinese government's downright inhumane policy of disrupting Uyghur self-expression has also found support outside China, as Central Asian states bow to Chinese demand for suppressing their own Uyghur diaspora and Islamophobic Westerners express tacit approval of overt attempts to secularize the Uyghurs. For some, the threat of Islamic terror has made the Chinese government's heavyhandedness platable, if not outright admirable.
A previous post noted that the Chinese government's assimilation of the Muslims leads to a break between China and the Muslim world that would be detrimental to China from a grand strategic point of view, but short of the geopolitical implications, the fact that the Chinese government can so brazenly restrict religious and cultural practices of the Uyghurs and throw into re-education camps all those that it deems subversive show that such harsh actions indeed have some basis of support, both at the elite and grassroots level, both at home and abroad.
The tacit support can be confirmed in publicized public opinions. Even as some international media outlets condemns the Chinese government's mass incarceration of Uyghurs, the same can barely be found in the usually vocal Chinese dissident communities outside the country. For a group of people that is hypersensitive to the latest affronts of the Chinese government against disadvantaged groups (whether religious, political, or social), the Chinese dissident community has been largely silent on the Uyghur issue, as if it is not something that they as Chinese should care much about.
The situation is even worse within China. Islamophobia in the online space is on the rise, and interestingly, comments doubting the "Chineseness" of Chinese citizens of Muslim conviction somehow are neither condemned nor censored. A narrative has emerged that pit "Muslimness" against "Chineseness" as if certain cultural norms of Islam cannot be Chinese in any manner or form. As such, those who are punished for being too Islamic do not receive sympathies from the non-Muslim Chinese since those "extreme Muslims" are not culturally Chinese anyways.
It goes without saying how unfortunate it is to see the Chinese turning against Muslims who have been living in China for centuries. Muslims provided not only wealth from overland trade, a unique cuisine beloved by all, knowledge passed from the Arab world and beyond, and several major figures that made an enormous impact on Chinese history. To call Islam "un-Chinese" is to deny a major part of both the heritage of China as a civilization and the Chinese as a people. It is, more specifically, a denial of the Chinese as multicultural, multiethnic people.
That denial of the diversity of the makeup of the Chinese cannot happen in a more inopportune time. China is going through a massive decline in birth rates that will soon lead to a steep drop in both the labor force and overall population. To make up for the shortfall of workers, it will need to start redefining what is a Chinese person by both recognizing the Chineseness of both born from international marriages and immigrated and settled in China. The fact that China is a multiethnic country, to begin with, should make this task easier than for more ethnically and culturally homogeneous countries of Europe and Asia.
Such an assumption is now being undermined by forces such as blatant Islamophobia. The resulting inclination for the Chinese both at the grassroots and elite levels, both in China and outside, is to define the Chinese as somehow a culturally homogenous entity incapable of accommodating diverse cultural and religious traditions. Such a narrow view of who is a Chinese will make it that much harder for the Chinese to accept as one of their own who do not strictly conform to an increasingly narrow set of sociocultural norms and values.
Even just for the sake of making the Chinese more cosmopolitan and tolerant, it is necessary for the Chinese to firmly come out against the mass detention of Uyghurs. To tacitly support such outright othering of the Uyghurs through coercive means to deny the cultural diversity of the Chinese as a people and set a dangerous precedent for other minorities to be treated in similar ways in the future. The result is a removal of diversity within the Chinese populace, making it less and less prepared for a future where globalization increasingly brings people of different cultural and religious backgrounds together in the same geographical space.
A previous post noted that the Chinese government's assimilation of the Muslims leads to a break between China and the Muslim world that would be detrimental to China from a grand strategic point of view, but short of the geopolitical implications, the fact that the Chinese government can so brazenly restrict religious and cultural practices of the Uyghurs and throw into re-education camps all those that it deems subversive show that such harsh actions indeed have some basis of support, both at the elite and grassroots level, both at home and abroad.
The tacit support can be confirmed in publicized public opinions. Even as some international media outlets condemns the Chinese government's mass incarceration of Uyghurs, the same can barely be found in the usually vocal Chinese dissident communities outside the country. For a group of people that is hypersensitive to the latest affronts of the Chinese government against disadvantaged groups (whether religious, political, or social), the Chinese dissident community has been largely silent on the Uyghur issue, as if it is not something that they as Chinese should care much about.
The situation is even worse within China. Islamophobia in the online space is on the rise, and interestingly, comments doubting the "Chineseness" of Chinese citizens of Muslim conviction somehow are neither condemned nor censored. A narrative has emerged that pit "Muslimness" against "Chineseness" as if certain cultural norms of Islam cannot be Chinese in any manner or form. As such, those who are punished for being too Islamic do not receive sympathies from the non-Muslim Chinese since those "extreme Muslims" are not culturally Chinese anyways.
It goes without saying how unfortunate it is to see the Chinese turning against Muslims who have been living in China for centuries. Muslims provided not only wealth from overland trade, a unique cuisine beloved by all, knowledge passed from the Arab world and beyond, and several major figures that made an enormous impact on Chinese history. To call Islam "un-Chinese" is to deny a major part of both the heritage of China as a civilization and the Chinese as a people. It is, more specifically, a denial of the Chinese as multicultural, multiethnic people.
That denial of the diversity of the makeup of the Chinese cannot happen in a more inopportune time. China is going through a massive decline in birth rates that will soon lead to a steep drop in both the labor force and overall population. To make up for the shortfall of workers, it will need to start redefining what is a Chinese person by both recognizing the Chineseness of both born from international marriages and immigrated and settled in China. The fact that China is a multiethnic country, to begin with, should make this task easier than for more ethnically and culturally homogeneous countries of Europe and Asia.
Such an assumption is now being undermined by forces such as blatant Islamophobia. The resulting inclination for the Chinese both at the grassroots and elite levels, both in China and outside, is to define the Chinese as somehow a culturally homogenous entity incapable of accommodating diverse cultural and religious traditions. Such a narrow view of who is a Chinese will make it that much harder for the Chinese to accept as one of their own who do not strictly conform to an increasingly narrow set of sociocultural norms and values.
Even just for the sake of making the Chinese more cosmopolitan and tolerant, it is necessary for the Chinese to firmly come out against the mass detention of Uyghurs. To tacitly support such outright othering of the Uyghurs through coercive means to deny the cultural diversity of the Chinese as a people and set a dangerous precedent for other minorities to be treated in similar ways in the future. The result is a removal of diversity within the Chinese populace, making it less and less prepared for a future where globalization increasingly brings people of different cultural and religious backgrounds together in the same geographical space.
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