David R. Stroup is a Lecturer of Chinese Politics at the University of Manchester. He received his doctorate from Oklahoma in August 2017. His current research, drawing on ethnographic and interview gathered over the course of a year in China, focuses on how the renegotiation of ethnic boundaries in ethnic Hui Muslim communities in the context of urbanization interacts with China’s state policies on ethnic and religious identification. He is also developing further research on the everyday foundations of populist Islamophobia in China. His areas of specialization within the field of comparative politics include: nationalism and ethnic politics, everyday ethnicity, the politics of authoritarianism, and state-society relations.
The de-Islamification of Public Space and Sinicization of Ethnic Politics in Xi’s China
Over the past two years, local law enforcement in Hui communities throughout China have made efforts to remove Islamic identity from public spaces. This article shows that these restrictions are part of a broader centralizing effort by the Chinese party-state to emphasize conformity with a vision of Chineseness centered on Han culture, and scrutiny of those ethnic or religious practices that might be deemed “threatening.”
