Islamophobia in China

Islamophobia in China refers to the set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam and/or Muslims in China.[1][2] In general, Islamophobia can manifest itself through discrimination in the workforce, negative coverage in the media, and violence against Muslims.

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According to The Washington Post, anti-Muslim sentiment has also been spurred by media segments aired in China, which often portray Muslims as dangerous and prone to terrorism, or as recipients of disproportionate aid from the government.[3]

In 2017, journalist Gerry Shih described Islamophobic rhetoric in online social media posts as due to perceived injustices regarding the Muslim minority advantages in college admissions and exemptions from family-size limits.[4][5] In 2018, a South China Morning Post article similarly described online Islamophobia in China as "becoming increasingly widespread" particularly due to news of institutional preferential treatment for Muslim minorities and news of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang[6] An online movement against the spread of halal products in the country has also been reported.[7][8] A 2018 UCSD study of 77,642 posts from Tencent QQ suggested that online Islamophobia was especially concentrated in provinces with higher Muslim populations.[9]

Western media has reported that since Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, campaigns against Islam have extended to the Hui people and Utsul community in Hainan.[10][11][12][13]

Affirmative action
Main article: Affirmative action in China

From 1979 to 2015, families which belonged to the ethnic majority Han Chinese population were only allowed to have one child in accordance with the one-child policy. However, the Chinese government officially allowed minority parents to have more than one child per family.[14][15] Rena Singer of Knight-Ridder Newspapers wrote that "In practice, many minority families simply have as many children as they want."[16] With the change of the one-child policy to the two-child policy in 2015, minority families are still exempted from the two-child limit.[17][5]

Minority regions are not required to send tax money to the central government; all of it can be locally spent.[16] Minorities receive proportional representation in local governments[16] and a lower bar in university entrance exams.[18] They often receive subsidies such as personnel training, disproportionate public works investments, state grants in university education and in pastoral areas, they receive free boarding school lodging in return for natural resources.[17][19] The Chinese government encourages business to hire minorities and offers no-interest loans to businesses operated by minorities.[19][16]

Online

Racist and even violent Islamophobic comments are frequent in Chinese social media. Many users utilize popular social media sites like Weibo and WeChat to spread anti-Muslim fake news routinely taken from western far-right media sites.[20] Chinese Muslims who criticize Islamophobic rhetoric online face aggression from non-Muslim Chinese.[21] After the Christchurch mosque shootings that left over 50 worshippers dead, many users on Chinese social media praised the shooter and demonized the murdered worshippers. The most liked comments under most social media posts and on mainstream Chinese media sites covering the shooting were virulently anti-Muslim.[20] While negative stereotypes about Muslims among non-Muslims in China aren't considered recent, observers contend that a global rise of Islamophobia, the influence of fake news, and the actions of the Chinese government towards their Muslim minorities have exacerbated and popularized anti-Muslim views within China.[20][21]

See also

Further reading
  • "China's repression of Islam is spreading beyond Xinjiang". The Economist. 2019-09-26. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2019-11-10.

References
  1. Richardson, Robin (2012), Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism – or what? – concepts and terms revisited (PDF), p. 7, archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-10-25, retrieved 10 December 2016
  2. Hogan, Linda; Lehrke, Dylan (2009). Religion and politics of Peace and Conflict. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 205. ISBN 9781556350672. Archived from the original on 2017-04-27. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  3. Luqiu, Rose; Yang, Fan. "Analysis | Anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise in China. We found that the Internet fuels — and fights — this". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2019-02-26. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  4. Gerry Shih (2017-04-10). "Islamophobia in China on the rise fuelled by online hate speech". The Independent. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  5. Gerry Shih (2017-04-10). "Unfettered online hate speech fuels Islamophobia in China". AP NEWS. Archived from the original on 2019-10-19. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  6. Laurie Chen (2018-10-25). "Chinese man jailed for Koran burning as Islamaphobia spreads online". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 2019-12-22. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  7. Koetse, Manya (July 21, 2017). "The Anti "Halalification" Crusade of Chinese Netizens". What's on Weibo. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  8. "China: The problem of growing anti-muslim sentiment". DW News. Jan 28, 2019. Retrieved 2020-12-03 – via Youtube.
  9. Bailey Marsheck; Mark Wang (2018-09-25). "Islamophobia on Chinese Social Media". China Data Lab. UCSD. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  10. Myers, Steven Lee (2019-09-22). "A Crackdown on Islam Is Spreading Across China". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
  11. Emily, Feng (September 26, 2019). "'Afraid We Will Become The Next Xinjiang': China's Hui Muslims Face Crackdown". NPR. Retrieved September 20, 2020.
  12. Feng, Emily (November 21, 2020). "China Targets Muslim Scholars And Writers With Increasingly Harsh Restrictions". NPR. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
  13. Baptista, Eduardo (2020-09-28). "Tiny Muslim community becomes latest target for China's religious crackdown". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
  14. The World; Affirmative Action, Chinese Style, Makes Some Progress Archived 2016-05-06 at the Wayback Machine, Nicholas D. Kristof, March 31, 1991
  15. Park, Chai Bin (1990). "A Minority Group and China's One-Child Policy: The Case of the Koreans". Studies in Family Planning. 21 (3): 161–170. doi:10.2307/1966715. JSTOR 1966715. PMID 2375047.
  16. Singer, Rena. "China's Minorities Get Huge Affirmative-Action Benefits." (Archive) Knight-Ridder Newspapers at The Seattle Times. Tuesday August 26, 1997. Retrieved on January 4, 2014.
  17. Bhalla, A. S.; Luo, Dan (2017-10-04). Poverty and Exclusion of Minorities in China and India. University of Nottingham, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9781137283535. ISBN 978-3-319-53937-9.
  18. Jörg Friedrichs (2017). "Sino‐Muslim Relations: The Han, the Hui, and the Uyghurs (page 26)". Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. University of Oxford. doi:10.1080/13602004.2017.1294373.
  19. Hill, Ann Maxwell and Minglang Zhou. "Introduction." In: Zhou, Minglang and Ann Maxwell Hill (editors). Affirmative Action in China and the U.S.: A Dialogue on Inequality and Minority Education. Palgrave Macmillan, October 13, 2009. Dickinson College ISBN 0230100929, 9780230100923. Pages 8 Archived 2014-07-07 at the Wayback Machine-14.
  20. "After New Zealand massacre, Islamophobia spreads on Chinese social media". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2021-01-13.
  21. Johnson, Ian (2019-05-14). "Islamophobia in China". ChinaFile. Retrieved 2021-01-13.
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