Why are Chinese netizens rallying against Muslims?<\/p>\n
By Mu Chunshan
\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bSeptember 13, 2016<\/p>\n
Chinese social media is quite different from traditional media in many ways; netizens, for instance, express their support or criticism of certain social groups more aggressively, with much less reserve. This is due partially to the government\u2019s tight control of television broadcasters and newspapers, which does not allow any deviation from the official line. Conversely, China\u2019s Internet is relatively open \u2013 government\u2019s control notwithstanding, a netizen can post angry comments from time to time with impunity.<\/p>\n
Discussions on Muslims and Islam has been a taboo for China\u2019s traditional media for several decades. I do not know the exact time when this began, but according to conventional wisdom and experience in the media, it dates back to the Mao Zedong era. When metropolitan newspapers and television programs flourished during the 1990s, it became even more difficult to report on Muslim issues.<\/p>\n
Some foreign observers tend to forget that China has 56 ethnic groups and quite a few of them are predominantly Muslims, most notably the Hui and the Uyghurs. China is home to 20 million Muslims. That number may seem insignificant compared to 1.4 billion, but the government cannot afford to treat Muslims lightly. As a result, Beijing \u2014 and thus state-controlled media \u2014 has been careful in maintaining good relations between different ethnic groups and their religions. Official propaganda on ethnic issues seeks to strengthen minority groups\u2019 identification with China and to avoid separatist tendencies due to ethnic and religious conflicts. For example, the popular song \u201c56 Nationalities and 56 Flowers\u201d ends with the line \u201clove our China.\u201d<\/p>\n
To that end, traditional media tightly restricts the way ethnic issues \u2014 particularly Muslim issues \u2014 are represented. When I was working at a media agency years ago, there was a ban on running anything related to pork or pigs along with stories about Muslims. As another example, I remember reading an interview with then Israeli President Shimon Peres, and right next to it there was another interview about Arab countries, despite the fact the Peres did not mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but only talked about Israel\u2019s relations with China. Such arrangements by the media were intended to serve the national interest, fostering a positive environment both for solidarity among China\u2019s different ethnic groups and religions and China\u2019s relations with Muslim countries around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n The emergence of social media has changed everything. Recently, some netizens have been expressing dissatisfaction, in some cases quite aggressively, with China\u2019s supposedly \u201csoft\u201d policy toward its Muslim population. Some netizens even took to humiliating and insulting Muslims in China and the Middle East. This anti-Muslim sentiment found on social media poses new challenges for China\u2019s regulators tackling ethnic and religious issues.<\/p>\n Plenty of examples indicate there is a surge of hostility on China\u2019s social media toward Muslims. Netizens have invented a new phrase \u2013 \u201cGreen Religion\u201d \u2014 to refer to Islam, due to the color\u2019s significance in the religion (including the color\u2019s inclusion in most national flags of Muslim countries). Muslims, then, are referred to be the invested phrase \u201cthe Greens\u201d \u2014 an openly derogatory term. Each time an attack occurs in the West, for instance when news came out about the attacks in Paris or Brussels, it sparked heated discussions on China\u2019s social media, and some would suggest that \u201cthis must have been done by the Greens.\u201d<\/p>\n Such attacks are the first reason why China\u2019s netizens have turned against Muslims. An increase in terrorist attacks has awakened the Chinese to the threat of terrorism. Since most of these attacks were carried out by Muslims, netizens\u2019 attitude toward Muslims in general has deteriorated.<\/p>\n China has suffered fewer terrorist attacks compared to the West, but the number of attacks has been increasing, especially in the western part of China, for example in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The suicide bombing of the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan is another case in point. The interesting thing is, while China told its people to support Arab countries, especially the Palestinian cause, during Mao and Deng\u2019s time, China\u2019s netizens now are overwhelmingly supportive of Israel taking military action against Arab countries.<\/p>\n As an example, the head of Al Jazeera<\/em>\u2019s Beijing office has a Weibo account and almost every post is subject to attacks. Some comments are extremely hostile \u2013 \u201cPack up and go back to the Middle East\u201d \u2014 or even violent \u2014 \u201cWe support Israel\u2019s killing of you all.\u201d<\/p>\n The refugee crisis has also contributed to negative views toward Muslims among the Chinese. Chinese pride themselves on their hardworking image, and many of them look down upon refugees from the Middle East, especially physically strong men who smuggled their way to Europe. Most of China\u2019s netizens dismiss the refugees as mobs, or agents working for Islamic State; the refugees are labeled \u201clazy\u201d and a security liability to the world. This dynamic also feeds into Chinese netizen\u2019s growing anti-Muslim sentiment.<\/p>\n China\u2019s netizens are now making fun of Europe\u2019s policy on refugees, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s decision to accept refugees. Many netizens say in a mocking tone that Germany will turn \u201cGreen\u201d one day and Europe will become \u201cEuropestan.\u201d When some leaders in the West suggested that China should also accept some refugees from the Middle East, it was rejected flat out on China\u2019s social media. Some netizens even suggested China should let the refugees stay in the West to bring more disasters on Western countries.<\/p>\n In addition to events overseas, however, China\u2019s domestic policy has also been responsible for the hostility toward Muslims online. As was mentioned earlier, China has been trying to maintain the cohesion between different ethnic groups and religions over several decades, but this has now sparked a backlash on the social media.<\/p>\n For example, China is building large numbers of mosques in its western region, and construction has even extended to Shenzhen, a developed city on the east coast. Some Muslim communities in the western region have started learning Arabic at school, and road signs now have Arabic along with Chinese. Some Muslim women in China have adopted the wearing of the hijab or even black burqas. The spread of visually identifiable signs of Muslim identity has led to criticism online. Some netizens blame these changes on China\u2019s misguided ethnic and religious policy; some even went so far as to compare Beijing\u2019s policy toward Muslims to the appeasement of the Nazis before World War II. They believe if this tendency is not curbed, the Han Chinese position as China\u2019s dominant ethnic group will be at stake.<\/p>\n These comments stem from a deep-seated fear that China may also \u201cturn Green\u201d one day. The hostility toward Muslims is in fact also an objection toward what they consider as China\u2019s misguided ethnic and religious policy, which is viewed as too soft on Muslims. Since such sentiments could never appear on television and newspapers controlled by the government, the Internet has become their battlefield.<\/p>\n The dominant ethnic group in China is the Han, making up around 90 percent of the total population; unsurprisingly, then, most Chinese netizens also happen to be Han Chinese. This is why anti-Muslim views that espouse a sense of superiority of the Han Chinese are able to gather considerable support. Adding to this is the obtrusive presence of Muslims in some parts of the country, which leads to further animosity among the Han Chinese.<\/p>\n During Ramadan several months ago, one major street in China\u2019s biggest city Shanghai was sealed off to allow tens of thousands of Muslims to line up to pray toward Mecca. Photos of the scene deeply unnerved the \u201cHan nationalists\u201d and increased their anxiety about the prospect of \u201cChina\u2019s fall into Muslim hands,\u201d following the example of Europe.<\/p>\n China\u2019s social media also regularly churn out stories about conflicts between the country\u2019s Muslim and non-Muslim communities. For example, some Muslims demand that there should be no smell of pork in their neighborhood. In other incidents, some Muslims, believing the trucks carrying Halal food are not clean, have forced their way onto the trucks for inspections. Once these small-scale conflicts are labeled as a Muslim issue, they immediately go viral on social media, which further antagonizes China\u2019s netizens against Muslims.<\/p>\n In the most recent case, the tragic murder-suicide of a mother and her four children in Gansu province has also been given an anti-Muslim context by netizens. Media reports have blamed extreme poverty for the grisly case. Some netizens, however, blame ethnic policy \u2014 they argue that the government should not spend money on mosques when people are living in poverty.<\/p>\n Only rational debate can lead to a more secure China. The rise of aggressive anti-Muslim sentiments on social media is a worrisome step in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why are Chinese netizens rallying against Muslims?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}