Introduction
During the 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek, the president of the Republic of China and the leader of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang; KMT), kept a book on the Turkish revolution in his car, which he would often skim through, as noted in his diary.Footnote 1 The success of the Turkish revolution under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was an inspiration for Chiang as he pursued his mission to unify and develop China, liberate it from Japanese occupation, and quell the Communist movement. In that sense he was following the example of Sun Yat-sen, who had celebrated the triumph of the Turks in 1924 during one of his speeches in Kobe, Japan.Footnote 2 In that address, Sun Yat-sen portrayed Turkey as the western barricade of Asia, safeguarding Asian nations from encroachment by Western imperialists. Chinese nationalists and intellectuals, indeed, closely observed Turkey and its development because it was the first nation among colonized and semi-colonized countries to liberate itself from imperialist control and successfully establish a Republican nation-state after the Independence War (1919–1923). They were willing to learn from Turkey’s accomplishments and its mistakes.
Chinese-speaking Muslims (known as Huizu in the People’s RepublicFootnote 3) of the Republican era (1912–1949), particularly those who actively participated in national intellectual and political debates in the political and intellectual centres of eastern China, also closely watched Turkey. They viewed Turkish modernity with a special interest and distinct concerns due to their dual identity as Chinese and Muslim, as they sought solutions to their own political, national, and cultural challenges. While some were disappointed by the secular reforms, for others, Turkey represented a revolutionary transformation and a manifestation of modernity driven by Islamic reform, which, they argued, put into practice the universal moral principles and human values Islam endorses. The religious justification of secular reforms prevalent in Chinese Muslim journals served two main purposes. First, it aimed to appease Chinese Muslims who were dismayed by the secular reforms in Turkey. Second, by introducing religion into the narrative, Chinese Muslims sought to emphasize the significance of Islam in the liberation and development of Turkey. Divorcing Islam from this narrative would render it meaningless for Chinese Muslims. The Turkish success story not only instilled confidence in Muslims by showing their strength in global politics but also had the potential to elevate the status of Muslims within the fledgling Chinese Republican nation-state.
The modernization of the Turks thus attracted the attention of both Muslim and non-Muslim nationalist elites in China, sparking debates about religion, secularism, modernity, democracy, and nation-building. Since the late nineteenth century, China’s intellectual and political leaders had grappled with the role of religion in the country’s modernization. While anarchists, communists, and iconoclastic New Culture intellectuals envisioned the eventual elimination of religion, the nationalist intellectual and political elite mainly sought to define the boundaries of acceptable and legitimate religions. To achieve this, they aimed to distinguish universal and institutional religions from superstitions, concepts introduced through Chinese modernist discourse (adopted from Japanese) that replaced the traditional orthodoxy/heterodoxy dichotomy.Footnote 4 Proper religions, according to this perspective, should not hinder progress and modernization or contradict scientific and rational thinking. Instead, they should actively contribute to the building of a modern Chinese nation-state. Moreover, religion was expected not to interfere with the secular institutions and workings of the state. Consequently, the Republican era witnessed extensive debates on defining the parameters of proper religions to make them legible and manageable. These discussions led to a comprehensive attack on amorphous folk spiritual practices, while emphasizing core, essential, and moral aspects of institutional religions. This involved eliminating superstitious elements and reorganizing their institutions, organizations, and clergy under state surveillance.Footnote 5
However, Islam, a long-standing component of China’s religious landscape since the Tang dynasty (618–907), posed its own set of challenges. It was a complex issue due to the prevalence of Muslims primarily in the northwestern and southwestern regions, which were under de facto warlord control during the Republican era.Footnote 6 This made the Muslim question a sensitive one, as it also involved integrating an ethno-religious community scattered across China but mainly concentrated along the borderlands. The nationalist Muslim elite actively engaged in these debates. Intersecting with the rise of the KMT’s homogenizing discourse and authoritarian policies, nationalist Chinese Muslim intellectuals began to emphasize that the fundamental moral principles of Islam were in line with the refined nativist ethical discourse and the political ideology that the nationalist state adopted in the 1930s, particularly during the 1934 New Life Movement, and incorporated into the state discourse on proper citizenship. This portrayal of Islam involved highlighting Turkey as a model for the awakened MuslimFootnote 7 who upheld Islamic ethical values while discarding historically accumulated superstitions. Nationalist Muslim intellectuals, who are the primary focus of this article, believed that these shared moral values, which transcended the specificities of religions, had the potential to create a common value system and cultural core around which the Chinese nation could unite. This vision also drew parallels with the Turkish nation-building experience and served as a basis for their arguments.
As such, this article builds upon existing works that offer a perspective from a minority angle on Chinese nation-building by granting agency to China’s non-Han peoples, such as the Tibetans, Mongols, and the Uyghurs who followed different strategies to reconstruct their ethnic and religious identities as the multi-ethnic Qing empire transformed into the Chinese nation-state. Footnote 8 These elites played an active role in debates and policy formulation as they sought to establish a distinct and legitimate space for their religions within secularizing China. With its primary focus on the interests of nationalist Han Chinese and Muslim intellectuals and politicians in Turkish modernization, this article also explores relatively uncharted territory within the Chinese intellectual landscape. While historians of China have studied the encounters of Chinese intellectuals with the non-Euro-American world, they have largely focused on their interest in the modernization experiences of Russia and Japan.Footnote 9 Although scholars noted the importance of Turkish modernization to reformers in the late Qing period, its continued relevance during the period of KMT rule has been mostly ignored.Footnote 10 Likewise, the transnational connections of Chinese Muslims and their interests in Muslim modernization efforts in different parts of the world, specifically the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, have been a topic of interest recently.Footnote 11 However, Muslim transnational intellectual, religious, and political entanglements with Turkey, a part of the Muslim world despite its secular governmental model, have yet to be examined in any systematic manner.
To achieve this objective, I begin by looking at how discussions surrounding Turkish modernization displayed variations and evolved over time, both among Muslim and non-Muslim Chinese intellectuals, each with their own interests. In the first part, the article will demonstrate the diverse and conflicting opinions among Han Chinese intellectuals concerning whether Islam played a contributing or negative role in Turkish modernization. This discussion connects to an analysis of the perceptions held by Chinese Muslims regarding modernist Islamic reform and its relation to Kemalist modernization. Recognizing that these debates are intertwined with nation-building, the article will then discuss how several KMT-affiliated Muslim intellectuals and politicians, following the Turkish model, argued for the confinement of Islam to an ethical realm, which they believed would facilitate the integration of Muslims into the Chinese nation-state on the basis of shared universal and national ethical and normative values. The article will then show how the KMT elite hijacked this narrative. Inspired by authoritarian developmental and fascist models in the 1930s, these elites utilized the authoritarian Kemalist model of nation-building to advocate for the nationalization (Sinification) of Islam to accelerate the integration of Chinese-speaking Muslims into the overarching Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu),Footnote 12which transcended ethnic and religious distinctions, categorizing Chinese-speaking Muslims as a religious minority. This was also meant to silence claims made by certain Chinese Muslim groups, who argued that a pan-Muslim minzu status should be granted to all Muslims of China, including the different linguistic Muslim communities.
While many key figures in this article are Chinese Muslims who aligned with the KMT and its vision of Chinese nationalism, the article also stresses the diversity among Chinese Muslims. In the last part, the article discusses the critical responses of Chinese Muslim intellectuals to the assimilationist discourse and sacralization of state ideology in the 1930s, which they feared could erode Islam’s distinctiveness in China. In summary, this article provides insights into how Chinese Muslims strategically navigated the constant debates and contestations surrounding the definitions of religion, nation, ethnicity, race, and modernity in China. It examines the intersections, complexities, and nuanced distinctions between how Chinese Muslims perceived Turkey as a successful example of the modern, awakened Muslim nation and how the ruling KMT elites in the 1930s promoted Turkey as a model of developmental authoritarianism with fascist inclinations and homogenous nation-building to secure the obedience of Chinese Muslims to the state and facilitate their assimilation within the nation.
The question of Ottoman modernization in China
In the late Qing period, both the reformist and revolutionary intellectuals of China began to observe the Ottoman empire, in the belief that China and the Ottomans faced similar predicaments in the new global environment. However, they drew different lessons from the experience of the Ottoman empire due to their distinct visions of revolutionary change and nation-building in China. It was only after the Kemalist Republican revolution that Turkey, almost by consensus, came to be perceived as a successful model for Chinese nationalists.
The notable reformist Kang Youwei viewed the Ottoman and Qing empires to be of the same type (tongzhong). Although he considered that ancient Turks and Han Chinese shared the same ancestors, the tongzhong relationship also implied that the Ottomans and the Qing occupied a similar position in the global arena as semi-colonial states that struggled to preserve their multi-ethnic and religious empires intact in the era of nationalism.Footnote 13 Kang considered the Han-centric nationalism of the anti-Manchu revolutionaries to be too narrow and argued that China was not ready for a republic and that a revolutionary outbreak had the potential to be too destructive. Coincidentally, he was in Istanbul as part of his European tour when the Young Turk revolution erupted in 1908.Footnote 14 He shared his view that the coup d’état initiated by the Young Turks to impose a constitutional monarchy proved the destructiveness of such revolutionary change. Instead, he advocated for a Meiji-style constitutional monarchy for China, but that this needed to be a peaceful transition and initiated by the emperor.
Chinese revolutionaries, on the other hand, initially appreciated the 1908 revolution but were soon awakened to the fact that the situation of the Han Chinese was not similar to that of the Turks, but rather to the minority races of the Ottoman empire, such as the Greeks. Articles appeared in magazines urging Han nationalists to sympathize with the ‘civilized’ non-Turkish peoples of the empire.Footnote 15 They also began to criticize the Young Turk revolution for being insufficiently radical, as it introduced a dual system in which traditional and modern institutions coexisted.
Chinese nationalists changed their critical attitude when Turkish nationalists, led by Atatürk, successfully toppled the dynasty and established a unified, Republican, modern nation-state. There was a new wave of excitement at Turkey’s triumph in discarding the unequal treaties at the Lausanne Conference, signed after the War of Independence. It demonstrated that the Treaty of Versailles whereby China lost German concessions to Japan, despite being on the side of the triumphant allied powers, could likewise be revised. There was also the problem that the unequal treaties signed between the Qing empire and imperialist powers were not abolished after the Republican revolution in China. Turkey’s achievements alleviated the feelings of inferiority and gave confidence to Chinese nationalists who sought models to help them overcome the challenges of the ‘abortive revolution’ of 1911, which had failed to unify China, create a nation-state, or abolish unequal treaties.Footnote 16
In the 1920s, books and articles on Turkey flourished in China.Footnote 17 This literature commonly demonized the Ottomans, aligning with the Kemalist ideology that viewed the nationalist revolution as a complete break from the past. Chinese intellectuals who wrote about the Turkish revolution mostly argued that the Ottomans were corrupt despots destined to be overthrown by the will of the nationalists. For instance, in his book New Turkey, Liu Keshu, who graduated from the Department of Political Science at Peking University and later became an influential politician in the KMT,Footnote 18 contended that the Young Turk movement was led by a privileged class centred mostly in Istanbul. Their failure was due to the lack of substantial support from the middle and lower classes, as well as the provinces. The Nationalist Party (Republican People’s Party) of Turkey, on the other hand, recognized the crucial significance of the will of the people in Anatolia and harnessed it into a revolutionary force.Footnote 19 Song Shuren,Footnote 20 the author of another book similarly titled New Turkey, also argued that the Kemalist revolution was characterized by a smooth transformation rather than a coup d’état, unlike the Young Turk revolution. The Turkish Revolution was conceived of by a small group of individuals who were the first to be awakened, but it was the collective efforts of the masses that brought it to fruition. Previous Ottoman modernization efforts, Liu and Song claimed, were imposed by the imperialists to protect Christian minorities and, therefore, could not bring about effective societal change. In contrast, they viewed the Kemalist revolution as a genuine awakening of the Turkish people and that Atatürk’s success was ultimately based on his recognition of the vital importance of the people’s support.Footnote 21
Their views also aligned with historians Arnold J. Toynbee and Kenneth P. Kirkwood, whose book, titled Turkey, was translated into Chinese by the notable journalist Cheng Zhongxing in 1928.Footnote 22 Chen studied political science at Fudan University and the London School of Economics in the early 1930s. He became the director of Zhongyang ribao in the 1930s, served as a member of the Legislative Yuan, and was the deputy minister of the Central Propaganda Department of the KMT government in 1939. Toynbee and Kirkwood celebrated modern Turkey as an example of successful Westernization, which they also viewed as the triumph of Western civilization. Their evaluation of Turkey was a positive one, as they also viewed previous modernization attempts to be a failure. Specifically, they considered the Ottomanism of the Young Turks, a move to unite multi-ethnic and multi-religious peoples of the Ottoman empire, as a failed project due to the rising nationalist sentiments among the non-Turks of the empire. Like Liu and Song, they appreciated Kemal and his nationalist fellow fighters for fanning the ‘genuine Turkish national spirit’ into a flameFootnote 23 and bringing Turkey’s anti-imperialist struggle to victory.
However, none had absolute confidence in the collective will of the common people. Liu Keshu emphasized that the primary responsibility of enlightened leaders was to awaken the masses to their dormant power. The populace of Turkey, like that of China, lacked education. In Turkey, Mustafa Kemal and the nationalists effectively mobilized public support by engaging in propaganda and organizing efforts. Following the conclusion of the war they further consolidated their influence through educational initiatives. Song Shuren emphasized the significance of this preliminary phase. He explicitly stated that the Turkish nationalists postponed reforms until the population was ready. As a result, it was a revolution with minimal bloodshed—a seamless and transformative revolution rather than a sudden overthrow of power. Likewise, Toynbee and Kirkwood reserved a good amount of space to discuss the ignorance of the masses. They also noted that the masses were relatively silent as they underwent radical transformations under Kemal’s top-down reforms.
This emphasis on the importance of popular will and democratic intentions had political significance in the 1920s. Liu and Song believed that Atatürk envisioned a transition to multi-party democracy in the future, which they likened to Sun Yat-sen’s idea of elitist tutelage as a necessary stage in China’s democratization.Footnote 24 Toynbee and Kirkwood, having observed the closure of opposition parties, persecution of dissidents, and the concentration of power in the hands of Kemal, were more hesitant, though they did not totally dismiss the possibility of a future democratic orientation.Footnote 25 However, these interpretations of Kemalist reform changed in the 1930s, along with the ideological positioning of the nationalist intellectuals and that of the KMT elite as they began to express an interest in the developmental authoritarian and fascist models across the world. In the 1930s, as the Kemalist regime became increasingly authoritarian, Chinese nationalists began to see Turkey more as a successful model for authoritarian developmentalism, along with authoritarian regimes in Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union.
The role of Islam in Turkish modernization and the debates in China
The role of religion in the context of a secular nation-state was a highly debated issue in both post-imperial Turkey and China. Non-Muslim Chinese intellectuals were concerned about the role of Islam in Turkish modernization, and they expressed different views on this topic in the 1920s. Liu Keshu, similar to Toynbee and Kirkwood, for example, saw the secular reforms as an attempt to reduce the role of Islam, which was considered by the nationalist Turkish elites to be a reactionary force in the process of making a modern and Westernized Turkish nation.Footnote 26 Secular reforms were therefore undertaken to eradicate Islam. Song Shuren held an opposing view. He claimed that Kemalist reforms, despite their secular veneer, were meant to revive Islam as many of the reforms were seen as the realization of Islamic principles, such as justice, solidarity, and equality.Footnote 27 According to Song, eliminating the caliphate and implementing secular reforms were essential steps to establish a system of equal citizenship under the rule of law. This move aimed to prevent external forces from meddling in Turkey’s internal matters, with the goal of ensuring the well-being and safety of non-Muslim communities. Turkey’s adoption of a secular constitution effectively achieved the creation of a nation built on the notion of citizenship (guomin), rather than on race or religion.Footnote 28
Chinese Muslim intellectuals, understandably, grappled with the secular reforms, particularly the issue of Turkey’s abolishment of the caliphate in 1924. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman sultans had transformed the religious-spiritual role of the caliphate into a political anti-imperialist instrument, mobilizing Muslims from various parts of the world to garner support for the Ottoman cause against Western powers and to position the Ottomans as active players in the emerging great power entanglements and conflicts. The new symbolic and political significance that the position of the caliphate had acquired since then resonated positively among many Muslim communities within and beyond the Ottoman empire. This is particularly evident in the Caliphate movement organized by Indian Muslims to support the Turkish Independence War, in the belief that the Turkish nationalists led by Atatürk intended to save the Ottoman sultan-caliph and restore his authority. When the Turkish Republic was established in 1923 after the war concluded, many Muslim intellectuals, who had initially welcomed the Republic, were puzzled and widely disappointed by the abolition of the caliphate. They had regarded it as an institution with the potential to facilitate future Muslim unity.Footnote 29 However, there were also Muslim intellectuals who saw the abolition of the caliphate as legitimate, as it met the realities of the nation-state system of the contemporary age, or as an opportunity to transform it into a democratic and international institution that would no longer be monopolized by a single individual.
Despite the disappointment felt by numerous members of the Chinese Muslim community, as evidenced by their decision to withdraw from making a donation to Turkey following the abolishment of the caliphate, reformist Muslims inspired by Turkish modernization held a positive assessment of Turkey’s secular reforms that echoed somewhat those of Song Shuren.Footnote 30 They believed that Atatürk, despite his ardent secularism, was a sincere Muslim who did not intend to eradicate Islam from Turkish society. They attempted to legitimize these secular reforms using religious reasoning. The Chinese Muslim brothers Ma Hongdao (1899–1968) and Ma Mingdao (1908–1991), who received their higher education in Turkey at Istanbul and Ankara universities in the fields of Islamic philosophy and Islamic law respectively,Footnote 31 played important roles in disseminating the idea that Kemalist Turkey was not divorced from Islam. According to the Ma brothers, whose ideas were also disseminated by other reformist intellectuals in China, the reforms strengthened Turkey in two significant ways. First, these reforms, while eliminating religious institutions, ironically revitalized the core principles of Islam, such as equality, solidarity, justice, and sincerity. Second, the state had established the Directorate of Religious Affairs, which showed that its intention was not to eradicate Islam but instead to guide Muslims in the correct direction, preventing the rise of subversive or reactionary interpretations.Footnote 32 They found this idea of a centralized regulatory institution appealing as they believed that such an entity could resolve (sometimes violent) historical conflicts among Chinese Muslims, mainly arising from different understandings of Islam.Footnote 33
As for the abolition of the caliphate, Yuehua, the most long-lasting and influential Chinese Muslim journal of the Republican era, published the translation of an article in 1931 legitimizing the abolishment of the caliphate from an Islamic standpoint. The article was authored by a non-Muslim, Caleb Gates, the director of Robert College, an American Congregational missionary school established in 1863 in Istanbul. Gates made two arguments. First, he called attention to the fact that the caliphate as an institution had never realized its potential to unify Muslims; on the contrary, it had become a source of conflict, as multiple Muslim emperors claimed the post at the same time. Second, he drew attention to the hadith, in which Prophet Muhammad stated, ‘thirty years after me, there will be no caliph’.Footnote 34 This hadith was also used by the Kemalist elite, who in the early years of the Republic were determined to legitimize the decision from an Islamic perspective.
This argument legitimizing the abolishment of the caliphate from an Islamic point of view was perhaps not a widely accepted one, but it was an idea upheld by some influential reformists around the world. Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), a prominent reformist intellectual from British India, introduced to China by Hai Weiliang, who had studied at Lucknow Nadwat al-Ulama University in India, was one such advocate.Footnote 35 Hai, influenced by Iqbal’s thoughts, wrote articles supporting certain controversial secular policies in Turkey, such as the adoption of the Latin alphabet and making the call to prayer (adhan) in Turkish.Footnote 36 His positive assessment of the Turkish revolution was clearly shaped by his intellectual engagement with Iqbal, who saw the realization of Islamic principles in the secular Turkish reforms. Iqbal’s conclusion was a product of his philosophical refutation of any kind of binary opposition between sacred and secular, spiritual and profane. For him, ideal Islamic principles could manifest themselves in secular human organizations. This is because, according to the Qu’ran, the Ultimate Reality was spiritual and found its essence in temporal, material, and secular activity. Hence, everything secular was inherently sacred in its existence.Footnote 37
For Iqbal, Turkey, alone among the Muslim nations, had awakened from its ‘dogmatic slumber and attained self-consciousness’.Footnote 38 Only the Turks had generated new values and intellectual freedom and rescued Islam from its ‘hard crust which has immobilized an essentially dynamic outlook on life’.Footnote 39 Iqbal argued that Turkish nationalists achieved this by exercising ijtihad (independent reasoning to come up with a religious ruling without taking the precedents into consideration) in regard to the institution of the caliphate, thereby abolishing decaying ideas about the status of the institution. He claimed that the Republican system of governance was not only completely compatible with the principles of Islam but had also become necessary due to the emergence of new forces.Footnote 40 For Iqbal, in the new modern order, it was perfectly legitimate for an elected assembly to replace the seat of the caliph. Iqbal envisioned the re-establishment of the caliphate as a spiritual and unifying force only after each Muslim nation had achieved independence. However, his vision did not entail a global Muslim state governed by a single individual. Instead, he imagined a league of nations, with each nation governed by a Republican system.
Regarding the question of the future of the caliphate, Iqbal was indebted to the Turkish intellectual Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924), who had laid down the theoretical foundations of Turkish nationalism. Gökalp’s thought was also transmitted to China through the translations of Ma HongdaoFootnote 41 and served as a source of inspiration for several Chinese Muslim intellectuals who grappled with the issue of the role of Islam and the place of Muslim citizens in the age of nation-building, thereby making the supra-national potential of religions a contentious topic. Iqbal, who recognized nation-building as the reality of the time, cited a poem by Ziya Gökalp.Footnote 42 In this poem, Gökalp emphasized the importance of first establishing powerful and independent Muslim nations as a high and modern form of social solidarity which would be a prerequisite for realizing the ideal of the caliphate. Gökalp envisioned the caliphate as a religious organization similar to the Roman Catholic Church, which would remain separate from the secular political institutions of each Muslim nation-state. It would function solely as an ethical corporation, representing the spiritual authority of the caliph.Footnote 43 It is debated whether Gökalp maintained his belief in the future revival of the caliphate in his later years. Although his ideas significantly influenced Kemalist nationalism, Atatürk never expressed any desire to revive the institution.
The Ma brothers transmitted Gökalp’s ideas on the issue of caliphate to China in the 1930s. Ma Mingdao, for instance, echoed Gökalp and thereby Iqbal, and argued in his writings that each nation should be liberated one by one before establishing global Muslim solidarity.Footnote 44 Nonetheless, many Chinese Muslim intellectuals were not that enthusiastic about postponing the revival of the caliphate to a future date. Although no representative from China attended the caliphate conferences organized in Mecca and Cairo in 1926, they participated in the debates through written correspondence. They expressed their views on the caliphate as a purely religious position dedicated to resolving conflicts between different sects of Islam. They proposed that the caliph be elected by the public. Some Chinese Muslim authors even suggested that China could serve as a location for future caliphate conferences, portraying it as a sovereign territory where Muslims lived in peace.Footnote 45 In 1931, when the World Islamic Congress was organized in Jerusalem by mufti Amin al-Husayni to discuss the caliphate question, Chinese Muslims once again showed interest in the issue.Footnote 46 The organizers also sent a letter to Beijing asking the Chinese to send a delegate. While Chinese Muslims could not send a delegate to the first congress in 1931, they sent Yin Guangyu, a member of the Society for the Propagation of Islam, to participate in the second gathering in 1937. Hai Weiliang also translated an article from India, quoting Iqbal’s closing remarks at the World Congress, which emphasized the importance of establishing an alliance of Muslim nations as a first step before achieving future unity.Footnote 47
Reformist Chinese-speaking Muslim intellectuals, whether they envisioned a role for the caliphate in the present or the future, were careful not to put the supra-national potential of Islam in conflict with national identities. It was common among Chinese Muslim intellectuals to see pan-Islamism as an anti-imperialist Muslim movement that was not in conflict with Chinese nationalism but instead could bind together (Muslim and non-Muslim) Chinese and (non-Chinese) Muslims. The Chinese Muslim journals were replete with articles discussing the potential of pan-Islamism both as an expression of Muslim solidarity and as a component of a wider global anti-imperialist movement.Footnote 48 However, the rising threat of Japanese imperialism, which culminated in the establishment of the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria in 1934 and the subsequent occupation of most parts of eastern China (1937–1945), made any reference to pan-Islamism increasingly problematic. This was mostly due to the Japanese utilization of pan-Islamism as part of its pan-Asianist policy and its attempts to establish a Muslim puppet state in Northwest China.Footnote 49 Chinese-speaking Muslims increasingly adopted a nationalist discourse which also intersected with the political regime of the KMT in the 1930s. This also had a tremendous effect on the debates concerning the formation of a Muslim ethnicity in China and the question of the caliphate.
In the midst of the Sino-Japanese war, in an article titled ‘Kemalism and Islam’,Footnote 50 Ding Zhongming, a prominent religious figure who studied at al-Azhar between 1932 and 1938 and moved to Taiwan to serve as the imam of the Taipei Mosque after the takeover of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, argued against the potential of caliphate and pan-Islamism, viewing national liberation as the ultimate principle of Islam. Ding justified Kemalist policies by highlighting the international and national circumstances that necessitated them. According to Ding, the caliphate rendered Turkey vulnerable to imperialist powers as they were driven by a crusader mentality. The potential of the caliphate, even though it had not been realized for centuries, meant that European powers had kept a close eye on the Ottomans, the seat of the caliph. Ding argued that Atatürk strategically employed one of the ancient Thirty-Six Stratagems, a collection of ancient Chinese military strategiesFootnote 51—that of inflicting injury upon oneself to gain the trust of the enemy. By appearing less threatening, Turkey’s enemies grew complacent, allowing Turkey, in turn, to free itself from imperialist aggression. Moreover, this enabled Turkey to focus on its national development. He also argued that the caliphs had long been corrupt and oppressive. By liberating the Turkish people from the despotic rule of the sultan-caliph, Atatürk acted in accordance with one of the primary principles of Islam—that of national survival and the liberation of people from persecution.
Japanese occupation and their pan-Islamist policy to establish a Muslim puppet state in China also rendered politically dangerous the idea of advocating for establishing a Muslim ethnicity that would encompass different linguistic groups—the Chinese, Turkic, Mongolian, and Tibetan Muslims. The idea of a Muslim ethnicity which was pioneered by notable intellectuals and scholars, including Jin Jitang, Xue Wenbo, and Ma Songting,Footnote 52 was widely espoused, but it also had its opponents who argued that the idea of a Muslim ethnicity ignored racial distinctions among Muslims and reduced Islam, which is a universal supra-national religion, to the ethnic customs of a minority.Footnote 53 The advocates of ethnicity for Muslims believed that Muslims could have autonomous rights and privileges in a secular republic only if they were defined within the framework of the legitimate category of ethnicity. They argued that the Huizu (Hui as a minzu/ethnicity) mentioned by Sun Yat-sen after the Republic was established in 1912, when the anti-Manchu revolutionaries abandoned their racist discourse and espoused the idea of the Chinese Republic consisting of five minzus (Han, Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and Hui), encompassed all Muslims in China.Footnote 54 They also observed that the KMT, despite its return to an assimilationist discourse in the later years, continued to promote the idea of political and cultural autonomy, especially when dealing with the minorities of the borderlands. As James Leibold shows, this policy, which was ‘rooted in the language and administrative precedents of the Qing court’, was adopted because the party did not have the necessary political determination or military strength to forcefully push its assimilationist policies on minorities occupying the politically sensitive and fragile borderland regions.Footnote 55 Despite this reality, however, the KMT adopted an increasingly assimilationist discourse at the time of Japanese occupation and eventually refuted the existence of different races in China. In China’s Destiny, penned in 1943, Chiang Kai-shek attributed any differences among the population to geographic and cultural factors. Chiang presented the case of Chinese-speaking Muslims to demonstrate that religious differences were mistakenly understood as ethnic differences in China. He made it clear that Chinese-speaking Muslims were Han Chinese who happened to believe in Islam.Footnote 56 Chiang’s regime even banned the use of the term ‘Huizu’ and proposed that Muslims call themselves Huijiao tu (disciples of Islam).Footnote 57 The calls for autonomous rights and privileges were also refuted. It was declared that it was not possible for a secular state to grant autonomy to a religious community.Footnote 58 This was also a time when Muslim advocates of the idea of Chinese-speaking Muslims as a religious minority within the Han became more vocal.
Ma Hongdao was one important representative. He was also an explicit advocate of the idea that nationalism represented the Islamic ideology of the contemporary era. He drew attention to well-known hadith often repeated in China, particularly during the anti-Japanese war: ‘patriotism is part of iman [faith]’. He also attempted to lay the foundations of a culturally and ethnically unified Chinese nation. Being a Muslim himself, he was very much consumed with thinking about the place Islam would occupy within the unified Chinese nation-state. Ma Hongdao believed that Turkey’s strength stemmed from its ability to nationalize Islam, transforming the Turkish nation into a Turkish Muslim nation and integrating Islam into the identity of the nation.Footnote 59 This idea of nationalizing Islam, which was central to the Ma brothers’ ideology, was undoubtedly influenced by Gökalp’s thinking. The latter defined the nation as a highly developed social group built on social solidarity centred around a shared language, culture, and value system. Education and upbringing were crucial in establishing a common language and culture. This definition resonated with Ma Hongdao, who believed that racial and ethnic divisions should not divide the Chinese nation, which had to stand united against the dual threats of imperialism and domestic fragmentation.
For Ma Hongdao, developing a Chinese cultural spirit would strengthen national bonds. This was again very much in line with Gökalp, who viewed culture as encompassing language, religion, emotions, ideals, morality, and aesthetic feelings. Gökalp believed that Turkish Islam occupied a central place within Turkish culture and acted as a strong unifying force.Footnote 60 Ma Hongdao emphasized this aspect of Gökalp’s thought by adding explanatory notes to his translation of ‘Philosophical Turkism’, clarifying that the Turkish spirit mentioned by Gökalp referred to Islam.Footnote 61 This focus on Islam as the core and shared value system of the Turkish nation reflected Ma Hongdao’s positionality as a Muslim in China, but it also served his goal of demonstrating the potential of Islam as a progressive religion that did not stand in opposition to the forces of modernization and nation-building.
However, an exaggerated emphasis on cultural unity based on religion had the potential to jeopardize the space that Chinese Muslim intellectuals sought to preserve for their distinct Muslim identity in a context where Muslims were a minority. I argue that what made Ma Hongdao’s espousal of Gökalp’s ideas on cultural nationalism possible (without denying a role to Islam within Chinese national culture) was his attachment to the idea of an ethical Islam. Both Ma Hongdao and Gökalp shared a similar interpretation of the religion, which placed an emphasis on it as an ethical normative system. Like Gökalp, Ma Hongdao was not concerned with the theological aspects of Islam but rather its social function, which they believed to encompass universal ideals that guide humanity, and thus would not conflict with an overarching national culture that would unify peoples of different religions and ethnicities.
Ma Hongdao, in that sense, aligned with other reformist Chinese intellectuals, who believed that these ethical values of Islam were shared by Confucianism in its essence. They argued that a national culture built around shared ethical and normative values was possible for China. The creation of such an overarching national culture would thereby facilitate the integration of Chinese Muslims into the nation. For example, Ding Zhengxi, a member of the Xidaotang community of Northwest China, known for their fusion of Confucian ethics with Islam, argued that both traditions were centred around the concept of the mean (zhongyong), and occupied a middle ground between spirituality and materialism. He believed that Han Kitab scholars of late imperial China played a pivotal role in expanding the potential of Islam in China by integrating Confucian ethics and cosmology into Islamic theology and metaphysics. He advised Muslim activists of his time to embrace a similar ethical-religious approach that would allow Islam and ancient Chinese culture to achieve a harmonious synthesis.Footnote 62
Another important Chinese Muslim who promoted the idea was the warlord of Ningxia in Northwest China, Ma Fuxiang (1875–1932). Ma, who sponsored Chinese Muslim reformist journals and schools and the publication of some of the Han Kitab scholarship, was also a friend and ally of Chiang Kai-shek and assumed important governmental positions during KMT rule. Ma was wary of the iconoclastic New Culture Movement and considered it to be a degenerative force. In one of the letters he wrote to Chiang, he argued for the importance of preserving native Chinese ethical principles, which he listed as zhongxiao (filial piety), renai (benevolence), xinyi (trustworthiness), and heping (peace), to rescue the nation. He proposed that these principles should be revived, made the philosophical basis of governance, and widely diffused through national education to create a national culture. At the same time, he proposed that the more backward aspects of native culture should be excised; in other words, he advocated for their selective integration as a means for guaranteeing national survival, independence, revival, and modern development.Footnote 63
Ma Fuxiang’s proposal was reminiscent of Chiang Kai-shek’s New Life Movement which would be introduced a few years later in 1934 to create a modern national culture based on selected native values to create a modern and industrial nation. Recent scholarship emphasizes the simultaneously revolutionary and nativist-conservative nature of the New Life Movement, viewing it as the culmination of the fascistic inclinations of Chiang Kai-shek and the right-wing members of the KMT.Footnote 64 The movement aimed to revive and revolutionize Chinese people ‘with a new militaristic everyday culture … [and] sanctified party-state’s stewardship’ of the Chinese nation, unified and mobilized through the renunciation of any ‘adversarial relationships between individuals, classes and races’.Footnote 65 Similar to Ding Zhengxi’s argument, this modern, nativist, yet revolutionary culture would also be a remedy to the excessively individualistic, materialist, and imperialist Western culture and dehumanizing communism, which aims to bring social change through class conflict. Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People was also seen as the embodiment of this modern, selective, and revolutionary adaptation of the native culture of China.
The movement’s ideologues chose four elements as ‘representative of the traditional value system’—li (ritual or decorum), yi (rightness or duty), lian (integrity or honesty), and chi (sense of shame)—and reinterpreted them in synthesis with selected modern values to meet the challenges of the new era. Footnote 66 As these principles were based on ethical and behavioural norms and were sufficiently broad and flexible, they could easily be adapted to various belief systems. It did not, therefore, require much effort for Chinese Muslim intellectuals who aligned with the KMT to embrace these ideals. For them, advocating for the revival of the Chinese national spirit did not jeopardize their Muslim identity.
The global rise of authoritarian regimes and the question of Muslim minorities in China
The emergence of this homogenizing and assimilationist discourse, culminating in the inauguration of the New Life Movement, can be attributed to Chiang Kai-shek’s authoritarianism, which was part of a broader global trend in the 1930s. The Great Depression and disappointment in the liberal regimes of the West led many to search for alternative models. Within this context, fascism garnered significant interest as a successful model of governance. Prominent individuals such as Winston Churchill and Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw expressed admiration for certain aspects of fascist regimes, especially their developmental efficiency. Similarly, the novelist H. G. Wells urged Oxford students to become ‘liberal fascisti’ and embrace enlightened Nazi principles.Footnote 67 This fascination with fascism could be found among Chinese intellectuals as well. The voices of the advocates of developmental authoritarianism became louder as democrats and liberals softened their critical tone against the KMT due to the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.Footnote 68 Under war conditions, expressing dissenting opinions became increasingly challenging due to the pressing need for national survival and the fear of being labelled as a traitor. The channels to voice alternative views also narrowed, as was the case for Chinese Muslim advocates for ethnic rights.
An influential Han Chinese intellectual, who expressed support for authoritarian models, was Qian Duansheng, a political scientist, and jurist with a PhD from Harvard University. In his article titled ‘Democracy? Dictatorship?’Footnote 69 he criticized democratic regimes for their inefficiency, stemming from party competition and class conflicts, and argued instead for the necessity of a dictatorial system and a statist economy in China. He analysed various authoritarian models, including that of Germany (with some reservations), Italy, Soviet Russia, and Turkey. It comes as no surprise to find Turkey on the list, considering that by the 1930s, the country had transformed into an authoritarian one-party regime under Atatürk’s leadership through the suppression of the opposition and the elimination of all rivals. Unlike the earlier Chinese intellectuals, who admired the realization of the people’s will in the Turkish revolution, Qian stressed his lack of trust in the unwilling, uneducated, and conservative masses. He argued that Atatürk deserved his power because he liberated Turkey, elevated Turkish culture, improved education, eradicated superstitions, empowered women, and enhanced transportation within a short span of time: all accomplished despite people’s conservative resistance. He believed that without a dictatorial regime, these revolutionary tasks would have been left unrealized. He thus supported top-down reform, stressing the role of a small, enlightened minority elite in bringing about modernization and development.
Jiang Tingfu, a history professor at Tsinghua University with a PhD from Columbia University, also made similar arguments about the problem posed by the conservative masses in an article in which he compared the Turkish model to that of China, Soviet Russia, and Japan. Unlike Liu and Song, who interpreted the role of the revolutionary elite as those who activated the latent will of the people, Jiang argued that revolutions were accomplished by already enlightened men who acted against the will of the people. He wrote:
No matter which country, the masses are conservative. Creation is the task of a minority. During the Xinhai revolution, if [the people of] the country had the opportunity to vote on issues related to the state system, 80 percent to 90 percent of the people would have voted for the emperor. If today people are asked to vote if they want the construction of motorways, they will vote against the motorways … If Kemal had followed the popular will, the liberation of women would not have been accomplished. We, who studied in the Western cultural zone, unconsciously received the philosophy of the popular will (minyi zhexue) of that zone. We forgot that the circumstances of our place are totally different … The renewal of Turkey before the revolution was very similar to the reforms during the last years of the Qing: these reforms were half-hearted. Accomplishments were few. The cost was too big. The whole country almost vanished due to this type of reform. It was when Kemal used a strict organization to unify political power, and used this political authority to eliminate opposition, Turkey began to rejuvenate truly.Footnote 70
In the 1930s, many in the KMT began to believe that Chiang, with the backing of a minority elite, could play a transformative role in modernizing, empowering, and unifying China. This type of thinking also necessitated the elevation of the state, the machine of heroic men, above everything. Loyalty to the state had to precede and even erase one’s loyalty to ethnic and religious identities. At this juncture, the Turkish model presented an opportunity to the state, concerned about the loyalty of Chinese Muslims, to instil in them a sense of obedience to it and the nation. The Turkish model supplied an interpretation of Islam that emphasized obedience to the state as a fundamental aspect of the faith.
He Yaozu, a prominent Han Chinese general and ambassador to Turkey between 1934 and 1937, played a significant role in introducing the Turkish model as an example of radical statism and top-down modernization to Chinese Muslims. He drew the KMT regime’s attention to the prevalence of pan-Islamism among Chinese Muslims. He Yaozu praised Atatürk for not pursuing a supra-national ideal. He argued that modern Turks prioritized national identity over religious identity. The nationalization of Islam relegated religious identity to being a matter of private life and spirituality.
He Yaozu emphasized that religion should function only as virtue-ethics and must serve the interests of the nation-state. He explained how Kemalism evolved into a sacred quasi-religious ideology, relating a conversation he had with a Turkish school director who stated, ‘We believe in God, but this does not necessarily mean that we believe in Muhammad because Muhammad was an Arab. He was a hero who saved Arabs. He does not have any relation to the Turks. Turkey’s savior is Atatürk. He is the Muhammad of the Turks.’Footnote 71 He Yaozu encouraged Chinese Muslims to transform Islam into a deistic spirituality that aligned with the state ideology of the KMT and to replace their devotion to Muhammad with devotion to Chinese heroes. He proposed that Muslims worship and exalt the person of Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary leader, and elevate his ideology to the status of the Qu’ran.Footnote 72 He Yaozu’s advocacy of the idea of an ethical Islam bears some resemblance to the views of Ma Hongdao. However, while the latter was more interested in finding common ground between a privatized Islam and what he saw as the overarching native culture of China, He Yaozu wanted the sanctified state ideology, with the rituals and the symbols of nationalism endorsed by the KMT,Footnote 73 to supersede particular religions. As we will see below, this position drew criticism from Chinese Muslim intellectuals who feared that subordinating religion to a sanctified state ideology would erase Islam’s transnational character and reduce it to a merely social and ethical instrument serving the Chinese nation.
The Chinese Muslim response and the question of state authority
Chinese Muslims had diverse and ambivalent attitudes towards the increasingly authoritarian and assimilationist discourses and policies of the KMT state which effectively narrowed the space for religious and ethnic minorities in China. Many nationalist Chinese-speaking Muslim intellectuals embraced the ideals of the New Life Movement as they did not perceive them to conflict with Islam, and they saw themselves as continuing the tradition of the imperial Confucian Muslim literati of eastern China. The latter affirmed a dual allegiance to Islam and Confucianism, with both teachings considered as guides towards cultivating virtuous individuals who would serve as the foundational pillars of a harmonious and prosperous society, and support those in positions of authority. Consequently, articles on New Life ideals flourished in Chinese Muslim journals. In these articles, the authors depicted the Muslim personality as the epitome of the moral and disciplined citizen that the New Life Movement was meant to create. The key principles of Islam, they argued, encompassed unity, courage, unswerving determination, obedience, hygiene, and strict adherence to the laws—the same principles promoted by the New Life Movement promoted.Footnote 74
In some of these writings obedience to state authority was also presented as a principle of Islam. Chinese Muslim intellectuals did not extensively discuss topics concerning individual rights, limits of state authority, and democracy. This was mainly because their primary focus was the pursuit of communal rights for Muslims, whether defined as an ethnic group or religious community, rather than individual rights as advocated by liberal democrats. They were willing to support any regime that would grant Muslims the autonomy they desired. In a few articles, mostly from translated sources, published on the question of democracy in Islam, which was more pronounced prior to the Japanese invasion, Chinese Muslim authors stressed the Qu’ranic notion of the ontological equality of human beings before God as a fundamental principle. They highlighted the early days of Islam, citing examples of how people were treated equally regardless of race, language, class, or gender, thereby drawing parallels to democratic ideals.Footnote 75
These pro-democracy articles also underscored the right of the commoners to disobey an unjust ruler. However, during the 1930s, this emphasis on righteous rebellion, which was seen as the right of the persecuted in the face of unjust and tyrannical rule, diminished, only to resurface when the war-time pressure was alleviated in the early 1940s and the channels for dissenting opinions opened up again. Reflecting the prevailing ideological atmosphere in China at that time, more and more Chinese Muslim intellectuals began to highlight obedience to authority by frequently citing the Qu’ranic verse (4:59) that enjoins believers to obey Allah, the Messenger, and those in positions of authority. This shift in emphasis occurred as Chinese Muslims, who had previously expressed dissatisfaction with the KMT’s rule, entered voluntary or enforced silence due to the intensification of the war against Japan. The cooperation of certain prominent Chinese Muslims with the Japanese also made it challenging for Muslims to be critical of KMT policies because, during a national crisis, concerns other than the fate of the nation were considered trivial.
In the meantime, ideas establishing the theological foundations for authoritarianism in Islam began to appear in Chinese Muslim journals. One remarkable case was Jin Diangui’s article titled ‘The Political System of Islam’, published in the magazine of the Chengda Teacher’s College.Footnote 76 Jin Diangui was then a student at Chengda, and in the following years, he was dispatched to al-Azhar University in Cairo for higher religious learning. The article was also included in a best-selling book compiled by the renowned scholar Ma Linyi, evidence of the attention it received. Jin presented the Islamic model as an authoritarian presidential system. The Muslim dictator (ducai) in this model was to be elected and was subject to recall in case of injustice. However, as long as the ruler was just and morally upright, his authority was final, and the people were obliged to obey. He incorporated elements of Sun Yat-sen’s governmental model, such as the four powers of the people and five rights of the government, as factors that would limit the power of the Muslim dictator.
Another remarkable publication was a translation from the Qadiani-Ahmadi magazine The Review of the Religions which appeared in Yuehua. In the article, titled ‘The Doctrine of Islam and the Ideal Political System’,Footnote 77 Islam enjoins the establishment of a life-term presidential system with a council of specialized scholars. This system, known as the caliphate, was different from ordinary dictatorships as the caliph’s authority was limited to some extent by the council. The article claimed that the people entrusted the caliph with the position based on his moral standing, although it did not elaborate on the appointment procedure. It is notable that Yuehua sourced this article from an Ahmadi journal. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Ahmadi ideas significantly influenced a group of leading Chinese Muslim modernists as reflected in notable journals such as Yuehua, Zhengdao, and Zhongguo Huijiao xuehui yuekan. Many Ahmadi books were also translated into Chinese.Footnote 78
The Ahmadiyya was a reformist movement originating in India. It was, however, considered heterodox by most of the Sunni ulama (scholars) after the founder of the movement, Ghulam Ahmad, declared himself to be a prophet who came to make the message of the Qu’ran applicable to the contemporary age. However, its portrayal of Islam as a peaceful religion and its interpretation of jihad (which literally means struggle) as a discursive and intellectual strategy of persuasion to refute the arguments of Islam’s adversaries, such as Christian missionaries, attracted the attention of influential modernist Muslim reformists in China. These reformists, mostly educated in modern Chinese schools in the eastern coastal cities of China and lacking traditional Islamic education, relied on English-language reformist Muslim literature. Ahmadis were a very successful Muslim missionary movement at the time, who made their ideas available in vernaculars, particularly in English. As a movement that has its foundations in British India, they also offered alternative interpretations of Islam that legitimized Muslim obedience to non-Muslim rule, which had always been a contentious topic among Muslims. Ahmadi Islamic discourse thus helped Chinese Muslims counter the widespread negative image of Muslims in China as a rebellious and belligerent people, and offered theological justification for their desire to integrate into the Chinese nation-state as a Muslim minority. Many Ahmadi scholars also laid the theological foundations for obedience to just rulers who were in authority, whether the holders of authority were Muslim or non-Muslim. Therefore, Yuehua’s publication of a translation of an article on this topic is not coincidental.
These authoritarian governmental model in Islam as it was formulated in the 1930s reflected both the characteristics of the classical theory of the caliphate, where the president served as the ultimate spiritual and temporal authority, and the central tenets of authoritarian models, which had become a legitimate alternative to liberal democracy by that time. Nevertheless, the Chinese-speaking Muslims’ calls for obedience to state authority was not absolute. Some were wary of the ideas of rightist elements in the KMT who argued that Three Principles of the People encapsulated and even surpassed all positive aspects of religions, rendering other religious systems unnecessary.Footnote 79 For many Chinese Muslims, there was also a sense of caution concerning a state ritual that required bowing before the portrait of Sun Yat-sen and the national flag, as they feared it might be considered idolatry, which contradicted the monotheism of Islam. Bai Chongxi, a powerful Chinese Muslim warlord and ally of Chiang Kai-shek, who was later appointed minister of defence in 1946, attempted to persuade hesitant Muslims. He argued that party rituals were distinct from religious rituals and that one’s political commitment should not be overshadowed by one’s religious beliefs. Bai Chongxi also conveyed that the China Islamic National Salvation Association, a prominent Chinese Muslim organization that was established to mobilize Muslims against the Japanese invasion in 1938, had discussed the matter and concluded that Muslims could perform the ritual ceremony without any concerns.Footnote 80
However, the matter remained a cause for worry, prompting Chinese Muslims to seek guidance from al-Azhar. The response they received, communicated through Pang Shiqian, the president of the Chinese Muslim student delegation, did not align with the preferences of KMT officials. The authorities at al-Azhar stated that bowing or kowtowing before a portrait was not deemed acceptable in Islam.Footnote 81 Accordingly, many Chinese Muslims, including the administrators of the most renowned Chinese Muslim school of the Republican era, Chengda Teacher’s College, refused to perform the ritual. It was forced upon the Muslim students only after the nationalization of the college in 1941. Even then, the president of the school petitioned the government asking for Muslim students to be exempted.Footnote 82
Chinese Muslim concerns over the increasing totalitarian discourse within the KMT was not limited to the performance of these state rituals. There were also doubts regarding the sanctification of the Three Principles of People. Some Chinese Muslims countered arguments that denied universality to the Prophet Muhammad and limited his message to the Arab people. These ideas, which were meant to erase alternative religious visions, were even negating the views of KMT-affiliated Muslims, like the Ma brothers, who were for the nationalization of Islam, by finding common ground between native Chinese culture and Islam and not by totally replacing it with a sanctified state ideology. For instance, in an article titled ‘Can the Three Principles of the People Replace Religious Belief?’Footnote 83 published in the widely read Yiguang journal edited by the famed religious scholar Wang Jingzhai, the Chinese Muslim author, who remained anonymous, expressed how a radical idea concerning the superiority and comprehensiveness of KMT ideology posed a significant danger to the very existence of the Muslim community. The author recounted his conversation with a party member who advocated for making the Three Principles of the People the new religion of the Chinese people. The party member argued that it was necessary to replace imported religions (although he was referring to Buddhism, the Chinese Muslim author noted the imported nature of Islam) and even Confucianism with the Three Principles of the People. The author underscored the marginality of such ideas within the KMT. However, he also communicated the frustration of Muslims with the KMT’s failure to silence these types of views. The author openly acknowledged the CCP’s pledges regarding ethnic and religious autonomy, suggesting the options available to Chinese Muslims. This article, published in 1938, marked one of the initial attempts by Chinese Muslims to tactically navigate the conflict between the KMT and the CCP to secure greater rights from the national government.
After the war with Japan came to an end, Chinese-speaking Muslim intellectuals were once again able to articulate their demands more openly. The idea of ‘righteous rebellion’ against state oppression and persecution began to re-emerge in Chinese Muslim journals.Footnote 84 This time, the idea of obedience to state authority as an Islamic principle had become even more conditional upon justice. In the mid-1940s, the number of Chinese Muslims who advocated for ethnic rights for Muslims also increased. They were also encouraged by the CCP’s willingness to grant ethnic status to Chinese-speaking Muslims. Although the CCP refuted the idea of Hui as a pan-Muslim ethnic identity, transcending racial and linguistic divisions within the Muslim community, its willingness to grant ethnic rights to Chinese-speaking Muslims, separate from other Muslim ethnic communities, was still an acceptable compromise for Chinese-speaking Muslims.Footnote 85
This was also a strategy the CCP used to mobilize Chinese-speaking Muslims for the communist cause. The CCP was very cautious in its treatment of Muslims during the Long March and its rule of the Yan’an Soviet established at the border of Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia (a region densely populated by Muslims) so as not to alienate the Muslims, who were also being mobilized by the Muslim Ma warlords of Northwest China against the Red Army whose members were ordered to respect Muslim customs. Mao even wrote the mosque’s name in calligraphy on a wooden board in Yan’an Soviet, which was also used as the association office of the Muslim members of the CCP.Footnote 86 In these years, Mao Zedong also used the Turkish anti-imperialist struggle to gain the sympathy of the Muslims in China. In May 1936, in his manifesto to the Chinese-speaking Muslims, he pointed at Turkey’s successful liberation from the imperialist yoke and stated:
The five minzus of our Chinese nation and our territory are cut off piece after piece by Japanese imperialism […] endangering the survival of your race. Will you let your Gansu die under occupation, or will you rise in the war of resistance and win independence and freedom for your Huizu? Turkey has restored Islam to its glory and gave good example to all Muslims and oppressed nations in the world.Footnote 87
Thus, Mao Zedong, like the KMT ruling elite, instrumentalized the Turkish example to mobilize the Muslims.
In the midst of the Civil War (1945–1949), after the Sino-Japanese war came to an end, Chinese-speaking Muslims relaunched their calls for ethnic rights for the Hui. The ethnic quota for the Hui in the parliament was considered a vital step in ensuring the communal rights and autonomy of the Muslims. Both the KMT and CCP refused the idea of an overarching Muslim nation. However, under pressure from the alternative visions the CCP offered to the Chinese, and due to Chinese Muslim political activism, the KMT eventually decided to grant a quota to the Chinese-speaking Muslims in the national parliament, without acknowledging that they constituted an ethnic group and by classifying Chinese-speaking Muslims as ‘citizens with special lifestyle and customs of China proper’ (neidi shenghuo xiguan teshu zhi guomin).Footnote 88 This de facto recognition of the distinctiveness of Chinese-speaking Muslim identity gained legal and official status only after the victory of the CCP when the new regime recognized Chinese-speaking Muslims (Huizu) as one of the ten ethnic groups that were dominantly constituted of Muslims, and granted them certain autonomous rights and privileges along with other ethnic groups.
Conclusion
The transformation of the multi-ethnic and religious Qing empire into a Republican nation-state presented new challenges to China’s non-Han ethnic and religious communities. The borderland minorities and others, such as Chinese-speaking Muslims scattered throughout China, participated in fresh discussions about their place and status within the nascent Chinese Republic. This was a time replete with debates concerning the notions of nation, ethnicity, and race. The socio-political realities of the time compelled the KMT elite to offer alternative visions at different times, ranging from pluralist notions (as was the case in the early years of the Republic) to the assimilationist homogenizing discourses of 1930s, to determine the criteria that defined the Chinese nation and its culture. Added to this was the CCP’s willingness to grant ethnic status and autonomy to the non-Han communities.
Religion was another contentious topic, as the ruling elite became concerned with defining the boundaries of legitimate religions in the context of modernizing China, as it sought to distinguish between acceptable religions and harmful superstitions. The dual identity of Chinese-speaking Muslims presented challenges for both the KMT-ruled state and Muslim intellectuals. Chinese Muslims engaged in the Republican-era debates with fervour as they wanted to integrate Muslims into China by guaranteeing communal rights for Muslims. However, Chinese-speaking Muslims held varying opinions and proposed alternative strategies to maintain their identity without compromising their distinctiveness as Muslims. They wanted Muslims to participate in the new nation-state as active and conscious citizens and contribute to China’s modernization and development. Benefitting from their centuries-old connections to the Muslim world, which also thickened in the twentieth century, they closely observed the experiences and modernist intellectual currents in the Muslim world as they navigated the constantly changing socio-political realities of Republican China. The experience of Turkey, a modernizing Muslim country that had freed itself from the shackles of imperialism and succeeded in establishing a nation-state, was put forward to address questions concerning the status of the Chinese-speaking Muslim community and the legitimate boundaries of Islam. Different circles selectively interpreted Turkish secular modernization to reinforce their own ideas and visions. While the KMT elite, especially in the 1930s, often viewed Turkish secularism as a model that relegated Islam to the private sphere and subordinated it to the state’s homogenizing nationalist ideology, many Muslims, as discussed in this article, preferred to interpret Turkish reforms as a revival of the essential principles of Islam. Muslims caught between the KMT’s assimilationist discourse and policies, as well as their aspiration to assert communal rights for themselves as an ethnic or religious minority, benefitted from perceiving Turkish modernization as a triumph of awakened and modern Muslims. In the 1930s, under the pressure of the Japanese invasion and due to the global appeal of authoritarian models, Chinese Muslims, who were aligned with the KMT ideology, became more vocal. However, Chinese Muslim political activism, seeking an autonomous space for Islam and their culture, which recovered after the war, also demonstrates that their obedience to KMT rule was never absolute but instead conditional.Footnote 89
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mohammed Alsudairi and Janice Hyeju Jeong for making this Forum possible and for their insightful comments. I also appreciate the valuable feedback from the two anonymous referees of this journal. I am especially grateful to Azfar Moin for the support he provided throughout the process.
Funding statement
This research was supported by Boğaziçi University (Research Fund Grant Number 19799/23B09P2).
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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