Let Confucianism and Islam work together: bargaining for a distinct Muslim identity in local propaganda literature

ABSTRACT In recent years, propaganda authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China have orchestrated the production of posters, banners, books, news reports, and literary magazines calling for the Sinicisation of Islam. What role is played by local Hui (Chinese Muslim) writers in the production of this propaganda? This article is based on a close reading of propaganda literature from a local county between 2010 and 2017. I show that Hui writers bargain for the preservation Hui ideological and cultural particularities. While contributing to the propaganda apparatus, they bargain to find a balance between the national call for the Sinicisation of religion and their own goal of the preservation of a Hui identity distinct from Han-Chinese culture. They argue that Sinicisation in the sense of value integration benefits the propaganda goals of the Chinese Party-State in a way that is not possible with Sinicisation in the sense of cultural and ideological assimilation.