Ma Xingrui, a top official of the Communist Party of China, declared on 7th March that the “Sinicisation” of Islam in the province of northwest China, where Muslims predominate, is “inevitable.” The chief of the party’s Xinjiang unit was speaking to the media on the sidelines of the country’s annual parliamentary sessions in Beijing.
He stated, “Everyone knows that Islam in Xinjiang needs to be Sinicised, this is an inevitable trend,” at a largely scripted briefing. In 2021, Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui, the former governor of the affluent Guangdong province was assigned to lead the Xinjiang government. Notably, Sinicisation refers to the process of non-Chinese societies or groups getting assimilated into Chinese culture. The end goal is conformity to cultural, ideological, and ethnic norms.
He and other regional representatives attempted to portray Xinjiang as welcoming to global business and tourism during the press conference while also applauding the region’s economic growth and disputing American accusations of forced labour and cultural genocide. He also emphasised the significance of “coordinate security and development.”
The politician used a political slogan to allude to “ethnic separatism, religious extremism, and violent terrorist forces” in Xinjiang and pointed out, “The three forces are still active now, but we cannot be afraid (to open up) because they exist.” Senior Xinjiang parliamentarian Wang Mingshan asserted, “We have carried out a severe crackdown on terrorist activities, promulgated and implemented anti-terrorism laws to combat various forms of terrorism.”
However, Xinjiang’s economic growth, tourism potential, and what the officials called “cultural preservation” took up much of the briefing. According to the region’s chairman, Erkin Tuniyaz, Xinjiang received nearly 19 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) in fiscal aid from other provinces in addition to 565.7 billion yuan ($78.5 billion) in central government transfers last year, which accounted for 72.7% of local government spending.
Erkin Tuniyaz and former regional chairman Shohrat Zakir, two Xinjiang officials blacklisted by the United States due to human rights violations in the region, accompanied Ma Xingrui. Over 4,390 international visitors to Xinjiang in 2023, based on officials, and the region’s total installed renewable energy capacity of 22.61 million kilowatts last year brought it to 64.4 million kilowatts or nearly half of Xinjiang’s power capacity.
The development transpired six months after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Xinjiang and instructed officials to “promote the Sinicisation of Islam.” He has been pressuring adherents of Islam, Buddhism and Christianity to become more loyal and prioritise their allegiance above everything to the Communist Party in recent years by advocating for the “Sinicisation” of these faiths. An Australian think-tank analysis estimated that since 2017, over two-thirds of Xinjiang’s mosques have suffered damage or have been completely destroyed.
Almost a million members of various Muslim minorities were imprisoned in re-education centres during Beijing’s severe security crackdown in Xinjiang in 2017, following a wave of violent ethnic riots, according to human rights organizations. A significant hub for the production of solar cells, the region has been marred by reports of enslaved labour.
China is charged with violating the human rights of over a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities and denying them religious freedom. The United States of America has even charged China with mass imprisonment, torture, forced labour, and Xinjiang genocide. Western countries have charged that China mistreated people in Xinjiang, destroying Uyghur cultural and religious sites, forcing labour, mass imprisonment, and forced sterilization. The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang, numbering about ten million.
On 28th April last year, the Center for Uyghur Studies (CUS) released an extensive research paper spanning 88 pages. The paper focused on the policies of the Chinese government in East Turkestan, which is also referred to as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China and highlighted the extent of the ruling Communist Party’s transnational war against Islam and the ensuing repression of Uyghur Muslims.
China’s campaign against Islam is documented in many different ways in the publication “Islamophobia in China and Attitudes of Muslim Countries.” It also discussed how Muslim countries have remained silent regarding China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the province of Xinjiang or Chinese-occupied East Turkestan.
