"This Absolutely Is Not a Hui Rebellion!": The Ethnopolitics of Great Nationality Chauvinism in Early Maoist China

Abstract:Through the 1950s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considered nationality disunity to be a product of "great Han chauvinism." But what happens when history's bad guys are not Han? In parts of China's Northwest, the party identified Hui Muslim elites as the main agents of nationality exploitation and Tibetans as their principal targets. It therefore declared Tibetans of all classes to be victims of nationality exploitation and ordered that "good" Muslims be distinguished from "bad," a task made more urgent by a string of uprisings that engulfed several Muslim-majority areas of the Qinghai-Gansu Highlands from 1949 to 1953. While echoes can be found in the late Qing state's response to Muslim rebellion, this article argues that the CCP's approach to the "Hui question" must be viewed as part of a particular practice of minoritization and a framework for conceptualizing the new socialist nation-state that would leave Muslims and other non-Han communities susceptible to majoritarian-state violence.