China Targets Muslim Communities Around the Country With 'Ethnic Unity' Policies

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing ahead in the Year of the Ox with policies of sinicization and "ethnic unity" targeting Muslim communities around the country, according to government websites. In the southern island province of Hainan, provincial vice government Fu Caixing called on officials at the provincial religious and minority affairs bureau to ensure they have a "deep" understanding of a CCP term: "integration in a pluralistic Chinese nation."

Religious affairs officials should be fully aware of the "connotations" of this concept and "further deepen ethnic unity," Fu said during a visit to the bureau on Feb. 18, according to a report on the bureau's official website.

"Unity" has been used as an umbrella concept in the northwestern region of Xinjiang to describe assimilation schemes in which ethnic minority Uyghur families are "assigned" a Han Chinese family, who visits with them regularly and puts pressure on them to observe non-Muslim traditions, including drinking alcohol and eating pork.

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