CREATING A UNIFIED CHINESE nation was crucial to China's transition from empire to modern nation-state over the course of the twentieth century. As James Leibold has shown, nation-building in modern China was a two-pronged process: First came the political and military incorporation of the physical frontiers -Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia. The second was identity building, i.e., reimagining and re-identifying the diverse peoples living inside these physical boundaries as “Chinese” (Leibold Reference Leibold2007).Footnote ² Turning former subjects of the Qing dynasty into members of the Chinese nation posed an enormous challenge for the governments of the Republic of China and, later, the People's Republic of China. Determining how to integrate non-Han groups into the nation was particularly challenging because the religious, ethnic and cultural orientations of Tibetans, Mongols, Manchus, and Muslims set them apart from the Han majority.

Various twentieth-century Chinese governments, from the government of the Republic of China to, later, the People's Republic of China, have perpetuated a narrative that former subjects of the Qing Empire naturally and willingly became members of the Chinese nation. This narrative assumes that the Chinese nation is a unitary and unchanging entity and that the modern Chinese state is its indisputable spokesperson (Duara Reference Duara1993; Fitzgerald Reference Fitzgerald1995; Duara Reference Duara1995).

Scholars in the West have called into question the assumed naturalness of the nation-building process in China. Thanks to their work, we now know that the Manchu Qing state created the basic classification of groups that would later be incorporated into conceptions of the ethnic makeup of the Chinese nation (Crossley Reference Crossley1990; Rawski Reference Rawski1998; Rhoads Reference Rhoads2000; Hostetler Reference Hostetler2001). Scholars have also shown that twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals and politicians made continuous efforts to construct a myth of national belonging based on the concept of an all-encompassing Chinese nation, or Zhonghua minzu (Liu Reference Liu2006; Leibold Reference Leibold2007). Under the umbrella of the Zhonghua minzu, minority identities were constructed and reified for groups on the margin of Chinese society to promote their incorporation into the nation (Gladney Reference Gladney1991; Harrell Reference Harrell1995; Kaup Reference Kaup2000; Schein 2000; Jacobs Reference Jacobs2008). Moreover, even the concept of the so-called Han majority relied on the identification of minorities as the “racialised Others against whom Chinese-ness could be defined or refined” (Lipman Reference Lipman2002, 117-8; Gladney Reference Gladney1998).

Nevertheless, most of this scholarly literature has emphasized the role of the Chinese state (or Han intellectuals associated with the state) in shaping minority identities as part of its nation-building objectives. Ironically, in their effort to expose the state's powerful hand in this process, scholars in the West have unintentionally collaborated with Chinese official historians in minimizing the agency of minority players in China's nation-building process.

This article challenges both the official Chinese narrative and the Western critique. It adds to a small but expanding body of scholarship that de-centers the nationalist narrative by focusing on minority agency in the process of China's nation-building (Tuttle Reference Tuttle2004).Footnote ³ Specifically, it examines efforts by a group of Sino-Muslim elites to shape the way in which the Muslim population in China, including the Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, became integrated into the Chinese nation-state. These efforts were driven by a globalized vision of the Chinese nation. By analyzing this vision, this article also seeks to further the scholarly discussion of the multiplicity of Chinese nationalism by situating nationalist discourses in a global space (Tang Xiaobing Reference Tang1996; Karl Reference Karl2002; Duara Reference Duara1997; Duara Reference Duara2009).

Against the backdrop of the Sino-Japanese War, three Sino-Muslim delegations went to Mecca between 1938 and 1939. Their aims were both religious and political. Commissioned by Nationalist Chinese authorities, the first five-person delegation took as its goal “to reveal the brutal Japanese invasion of China, the insult Japan has inflicted upon Chinese Muslims, as well as the determination of all Chinese people to resist Japan” (CMDNE 1943, 5). The second delegation was sponsored not by the Nationalist Chinese authorities, but by the Japanese puppet government in Beijing. The purpose of this mission was to show that the Japanese-controlled parts of China were “quite peaceful” and that Chinese Muslims were “living in security and happy with their life” under Japanese rule (Tang Reference Tang1939). For the third delegation, twenty-eight Sino-Muslim students at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, traveled to Mecca both to make a pilgrimage and to counter the second delegation's propaganda efforts. This article focuses on the first and third hajj missions, both of which were initiated by Sino-Muslims and were supported by the Nationalist state under Chiang Kai-shek. Mission participants’ interactions with Middle Easterners and the Nationalist government illustrate a Muslim vision for China's future and the active role elite Sino-Muslims played in attempting to shape their place in that future.

A Sino-Muslim Vision for the Chinese Nation

In the early twentieth century, a Chinese Muslim modernist movement (huimin yundong) brought together Muslim religious leaders, educators, students, warlords, businessmen, and government bureaucrats who shared a common desire to reconcile the traditions of Islam with modern ideas such as constitutionalism, industrial development, secular education, and nationalism. The Chinese movement was part of a broader modernist Islamic movement that lasted from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century and led to many intellectual, social and political changes throughout the Muslim world.Footnote ⁴ In addition to promoting other modernist goals, modernists in China embraced the idea of integration with the emerging Chinese nation-state (Lipman Reference Lipman1997, 167-211; Green Reference Green1999). The transition from the Qing empire to the Republic of China gave Sino-Muslim modernists an opportunity to promote an alternative vision of the Chinese nation-state that empowered Muslims in China.Footnote ⁵ In the modernist imagining of the new order, Muslims in China would participate in representative politics as a key political group (with Sino-Muslims also representing the interests of Uyghur Muslims in the nation), play an indispensable role in China's national survival, and become a bridge in a proposed Chinese-Islamic alliance.

First, late Qing reforms and the founding of the Republic of China in 1912 encouraged some Sino-Muslim leaders to embrace the notion that Muslims would form a unified political entity. Amid the Qing rulers’ tentative efforts to build a modern nation-state, some Sino-Muslim elites began to envision Muslims as participating in a territorially defined Chinese nation based on equality and citizenship. They argued that the state of global politics, in which strong countries took advantage of weak countries, necessitated that all individuals in China should support the country's political, educational, and military reform efforts (Bao [1908] Reference Bao1988, 28). In the wake of the 1911 Revolution, Chinese politicians promised that in the new republic the “five nationalities”—the Han, the Mongols, the Manchu, the Tibetans, and the Muslims (or the so-called Hui) —would enjoy equal citizenship and freedom of religion. Although proportional representation was never truly part of the concept of the “Republic of Five Nationalities,” the promise of representation and equality served as a powerful force, encouraging unity within the non-Han groups, especially a group as disparate and divided as the Muslims. Throughout the Republican era, Sino-Muslims had divergent views about whether all Muslims in China constituted a unique “nationality,” or zu, and whether Chinese-speaking Sino-Muslims were part of the Muslim nationality (huizu). However, evidence shows that the promise of political representation gradually led more Muslims to accept the idea of a common Muslim nationality (Mao Reference Mao2007).

Included in the conception of the Muslim nationality (huizu) was the Turkic (or Uyghur) population in Xinjiang—a group that was ethnically, linguistically, and culturally different from Sino-Muslims. Historians have noted that Sino-Muslims, while identifying religiously with the Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, had historically tried to distinguish themselves as more acculturated Chinese and more authentic descendants of Middle Eastern Muslims (Benite Reference Benite2008). In the early Republic, the possibility of uniting all Muslims in China to form a political voice increased Sino-Muslim leaders’ interest in the Uyghurs. Through a number of channels, Sino-Muslim elites tried to play the role of representatives of Turkic Muslims at the same time as they promoted the incorporation of Turkic Muslims in China. The Chinese Muslim Progressive Association (CMPA), established in 1912, was such a channel. Founded by several prominent Beijing imams, it was the first centralized, nationwide Muslim association in Chinese history. The CMPA requested that Muslim communities in Xinjiang join the association and accept the leadership of the Beijing headquarters, staffed by Sino-Muslims. From 1912 to the early 1930s, branches of CMPA distributed a variety of published materials in Xinjiang that promoted nationalism, citizenship, and republicanism. Two CMPA leaders, Imams Wang Kuan and Zhang Ziwen, became chief editors of the Huiwen baihua bao (Arabic-Chinese Newspaper), run by the Republican government's Mongolian-Tibetan Affairs Committee and aimed at promoting republicanism and patriotism in Xinjiang (MTAC, 1914).

Second, the modernist vision was based on the belief that Muslims were indispensible in China's cause of survival in a dangerous international environment. In their long history of living among non-believers, Muslims had been subject to stereotyping and discrimination from non-Muslims, officials and other groups alike. For example, Muslims in China's northwest were often perceived as “by nature fierce, predatory and hard to control” (Lipman Reference Lipman1997, XXX). Similarly, derogatory adjectives such as “fierce (han), combative (xidou) and assertive (qiang)” were used in official documents to describe Muslims in Yunnan (Atwill 42). By the mid-nineteenth century, the stereotypical view of Muslims as violent and dangerous, or “fierce and brutal,” had resulted in “a body of statutes and precedents that allowed magistrates to punish Sino-Muslims more severely than non-Muslim Chinese for the same crimes” (Lipman Reference Lipman, Crossley, Siu and Sutton2006). In the early twentieth century, Sino-Muslim modernists started to argue that the very qualities formerly used to stigmatize them would enable Muslims to help China survive in a world dominated by imperialist countries. In 1906, a group of Sino-Muslim students in Japan first pointed out that, because of their martial tradition, discipline, and solidarity, they possessed the qualities necessary to save China (Wang [1908] Reference Wang1988). Here the students used “martial tradition,” “discipline,” and “solidarity” in place of earlier terms such as “fierce and brutal.” Thus, China's weak position in international politics allowed Muslims to turn this stereotypical view on its head.

This rhetoric was adopted by various Han politicians and intellectuals who encouraged non-Han ethnic and religious groups, including the Muslims, to embrace their role as Chinese citizens, praising Muslims’ strength, unity, and patriotism. This effort became particularly visible in the 1930s, when the northwest regions of China came under a spotlight due to increased Japanese military pressure in these areas (Gu Reference Gu1936; Schneider Reference Schneider1971; Lipman Reference Lipman2002; Leibold Reference Leibold2007). Throughout the first decades of the twentieth century, both Sino-Muslim modernists and Han elites participated in the making and propagation of the rhetoric about Muslims possessing inherent qualities to be natural and useful members of the nation.

Third, appropriating the prevalent discourse of anti-imperialism, Sino-Muslim elites argued that a Chinese-Islamic alliance was necessary to fend off imperialistic forces around the globe (Wang Kuan 1914). This vision was in part inspired by some of Sun Yat-sen's comments. In an effort to recruit Muslim elites for what he called a project to awaken the Muslims, Sun emphasized Muslims’ potential contribution to the cause of combating global imperialism. At a meeting with Muslim leaders in Beijing in 1912, Sun praised Muslims for being known worldwide for their “courage and willingness to sacrifice.” He added:

As he had before, Sun linked China's goal of gaining independence to the global anti-imperialist cause. For the first time, though, he linked Muslims in China to Muslims worldwide, viewing Muslim unity as necessary for achieving the global cause. Sun's acknowledgement of Muslims’ potential contribution to the Chinese cause was aimed at encouraging Muslims to participate in the revolution and, more specifically, at eliciting Muslim elites’ cooperation in some strategic military operations.Footnote ⁶ A more well-known statement made by Sun about China's relations with non-Western societies appears in his will. Upon his death in 1925, Sun left a much-cited “political will” in which he said that China must unite with all “weak nations (ruoxiao minzu)” in the world that treat China as equal.Footnote ⁷ Sun's global vision was consistent with that of the Sino-Muslims regarding the future of their community in both China and the worldwide Islamic community.

During the Republican era, Sun Yat-sen's statement about the importance of Muslims to the anti-imperialist cause and his last will were cited frequently in the Muslim community and reprinted often in Muslim publications and in textbooks in Muslim schools (Ma Songting 1936). Referring to Sun's statements, Muslim modernists argued that China and Muslim countries formed the big core of “weak nations (ruoxiao minzu),” and should form a special relationship. For example, in 1929, the first issue of the Yuehua magazine, perhaps the most influential modernist Muslim journal, published as its first article, “Islam and China (huijiao yu zhongguo),” in which the author argued:

Echoing Sun's comments made more than a decade earlier, Wang asserted that global political conditions linked China's fate closely to that of the “Muslim nation.” Chinese Muslims, given their connections with the Islamic world, could serve as a bridge, thereby granting them an influential role in China's quest for independence and leadership in the global cause against imperialism. In addition, the early twentieth century saw a dramatic increase in Muslims’ efforts to reestablish connections with Muslims outside China (Benite Reference Benite2008). A globalized vision of China's anti-imperialist's cause allowed Sino-Muslim elites to reconcile their transnational activities with loyalty to the territorially bound “Chinese nation.”

To be sure, the views of a small group of educated Muslim elites were certainly not representative of all voices within Muslim communities living in the Republic of China. During the Republican era, Han warlords ruled Xinjiang, while central authorities in Beijing or Nanjing exercised only nominal influence. Inspired by Pan-Islamic and Pan-Turkic sentiments and prompted by the brutality of warlord rule, Turkic Muslim leaders tried to establish independent governments several times, such as the attempted formation of the East Turkistan Republic in 1933 (Millward Reference Millward2007). Even within the Sino-Muslim population in China, non-integrationist and separatist outlooks coexisted with the integrationist modernist vision (Lipman Reference Lipman and Hershatter1996). For example, Imam Ma Wanfu, who promoted a Wahabi vision of Islam upon his return from Saudi Arabia in 1892, originally emphasized scripturalist fundamentalism and was an “antiacculturationist” (Lipman Reference Lipman1997, 205). The modernist vision, however, captured not only the imagination of the urban, educated, and male Sino-Muslim elites, but it also was embraced by Muslims from a wide range of backgrounds: clergy, warlords, and merchants from different regions in China. Moreover, the modernist outlook was influential not only because the print media communicated the modernist vision to a wide audience, but also because, as will be shown later in this article, many Sino-Muslim modernists enjoyed close relationships with the politically powerful and thus could exert influence on government policies.

The decentralized and chaotic national politics in the Republican era created conditions that allowed Sino-Muslim modernists to believe their vision to be viable. Encouraged by this possibility that Muslims would become equal and influential members of the Chinese nation, modernist Sino-Muslim elites engaged in a series of efforts to turn Muslims in China, including those now classified in the PRC as Hui, Uyghur, and other ethnic groups of Muslims, into members of the Chinese nation (Mao Reference Mao2007). They sought to accomplish these goals through Muslim associations, publications, and schools. The flourishing of associations, publications and schools also promoted Islamic religious revival and Muslim political activism. In the 1930s, the intensification of the Sino-Japanese conflict provided Sino-Muslim modernists with further opportunities to advance the profile of Muslims in China.

The First Mission

The hajj missions took place at a time of intense competition between the Japanese and Chinese governments for the “hearts and minds” of Muslims living in China. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Muslim population in China, including Chinese- and Turkic-speaking Muslims, was widely but mistakenly thought to be between 50 and 80 million people, or between one-eighth and one-fifth of the country's entire population (the actual number was probably 10 million) (Zhao Reference Zhao1936). The perceived size of the population, coupled with the concentration of Muslims in the much-contested northwestern provinces of Xinjiang, Gansu, and Shaanxi, as well as in Manchuria in the northeast, made the loyalty and support of the group's elites especially important to various political forces, particularly Japan and the Nationalist regime.

Starting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, individual Japanese converts to Islam and private organizations such as Ajia Gikai (Asian Reawakening Society) and the Kokuryukai (the Black Dragon Society), began to cultivate pro-Japanese sentiments among Chinese Muslims. Pan-Asian in orientation, these individuals and organizations hoped to use Islam as a means to unify the Asian people under Japanese leadership (Esenbel Reference Esenbel2004). After the Russian Revolution of 1917, but especially after the early 1930s, the Japanese military and government gradually co-opted the efforts of these individuals and organizations in order to support a broad Japanese militaristic strategy in China and the rest of Asia (Esenbel Reference Esenbel2004). Japanese activities included using Japanese Muslim converts to befriend Chinese Muslims and establishing agencies and institutions to promote research on Chinese Muslims (Ando Reference Ando2003). In the early 1930s, Japan also began promoting the idea of a separate country for Sino-Muslims in China (Esenbel Reference Esenbel2004). This new Muslim country would be called Huihuiguo, or “a Muslim state,” and would be run by a Japanese puppet government, following the model of Manchukuo, or the “Manchu state.” This Muslim state would serve both as a buffer zone against the Soviet Union and China and as a way to divide and rule China (Esenbel Reference Esenbel2004).

The Chinese government under the Guomindang (GMD, or the Nationalist Party) sought to defeat Japan's effort to win over China's Muslim population. It tried to win over Muslim warlords in the northwest and other Sino-Muslim religious and intellectual elites (Yu Reference Yu1996). The GMD feared that a Muslim commitment to a pan-Islamic alligence would trump their ties to their Chinese identity, thus giving Japan an opportunity to promote its Huihuiguo enterprise, so the GMD made efforts to foster patriotism among Sino-Muslims. It did so by intensifying a campaign of indoctrination that included promulgating GMD party tenets through school lesson plans and published articles (He Yaozu Reference He1934). Moreover, to promote assimilation, the GMD trumpeted the idea that Sino-Muslims were not of the Muslim nationality, but rather were “Han people with Muslim faith” (xinle huijiao de hanren) (Yu 313).

While the GMD and the Han intelligentsia debated over the position of non-Han groups in the Chinese nation (Schneider 279; Leibold Reference Leibold2007, ch.5; Liu Xiaoyuan, 206ff), Sino-Muslim modernists were also divided over the issue of whether they were part of the Muslim nationality, or huizu. Some, such as warlord Ma Hongkui, supported the GMD policy. Others dismissed it as an effort to erase the distinctiveness of Sino-Muslims, believing that if Chinese-speaking Sino-Muslims were not seen as part of the Muslim nationality, they would be stripped of rightful representation, which they assumed was promised to them under the concept of the Republic of Five Nationalities (Jin Reference Jin1936). As will be shown later, while Muslim modernists participated in patriotic activities, many of them openly opposed such GMD policy.

Hoping to further advance the goal of the modernist movement to claim a rightful place for Muslims in the Chinese nation-state, many Sino-Muslims participated in anti-Japanese efforts. Through journals and other publications, dramas, and propaganda teams, they mobilized Muslim support for the war with Japan (Zhongguo huijiao xiehui 1951). In doing so they invoked a phrase from the Hadith, “Hubb al-watan min al-iman” or “loving the country is loving the religion,” which was first used in 1930 by Imam Wang Jingzhai. In the 1930s, Imams Wang Jingzhai, Ma Songting, Hu Songshan, Xin Zongzhen and Liu Pinyi, among others, promoted the phrase through journals, Friday prayers, and lectures in Tianjin, Beiping (Beijing), the Northwest, and Hebei (Matsumoto Reference Matsumoto2003). These imams sought to appeal to the religious sentiments of Muslims and promote the idea that being good Muslims required them to be good Chinese citizens. Muslim modernists’ participation in the project of turning Muslims into members of the Chinese nation thus continued during China's deepening crises with Japan.

In July 1937, Sino-Japanese conflicts escalated into an all-out war. With little help from other countries in the struggle against Japan, the Nationalist government encouraged ordinary citizens to engage in “citizen diplomacy,” using non-governmental groups to lobby foreign governments, sway international public opinion, and gain support for China. In November, a Muslim businessman, Ma Tianying, proposed to the Nationalist authorities the idea of sending a delegation to the Middle East to promote the Chinese cause. The Nationalist party headquarters quickly approved this proposal and provided funding (Kainan Yusuf Ma Reference Ma1988, 29-30). The delegation was called “the Chinese Muslim Delegation to the Near East” (hereafter referred to as the “Near East delegation”). The delegation left Hong Kong on January 8, 1938, and arrived in Mecca on February 8. Between February and December 1938, the delegation completed its pilgrimage to Mecca and visited Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, and Turkey. During this period, the group met with kings and prime ministers, visited mosques, spoke at prayer meetings, and participated in the meetings of various Islamic organizations (CMDNE 1943, “Zhongguo huijiao jindong fangwentuan zong baogaoshu,” 40).

The five members of the delegation were young Muslim activists. Educated, aware of current affairs, and full of patriotic zeal, they on the surface did not differ from their non-Muslim counterparts. However, all of the delegates had grown up in conservative families in Muslim communities. Each had deep-rooted social and emotional ties to the Sino-Muslim community. All of them also had strong religious and intellectual ties to the Islamic world. Wang Shiming, a student at Al-Azhar University in Egypt, was one of approximately three dozen Sino-Muslim students who went to Al-Azhar in the 1930s to pursue advanced Islamic studies (Benite Reference Benite2008). He was recruited by the delegation when it passed through Suez on its way to Mecca because of his mastery of the Arabic language (DIARY repr. 1997, 58-59). The head of the delegation, Wang Zengshan, spent five years of his youth studying at the University of Istanbul before returning to China in 1930. Wang pursued a political career and became a member of the GMD's Legislative Council, but remained committed to promoting ties between China and the Islamic world, and frequently publishing articles about the Islamic world and promoting opportunities for Muslims in China to study abroad in Turkey (Sun Shengwu [1961] Reference Sun1997).

Members of the delegation were active in promoting the advancement of the Sino-Muslim community in China, and sought its religious revival and political empowerment. As a college student in the early 1930s, Xue Wenbo, another delegate, founded the Beiping (Beijing) Muslim Student Organization, which tried to promote Islamic learning among young Muslims. In opposition to GMD efforts to ban Sino-Muslims calling themselves huizu, Xue changed the name of the Beiping Muslim Student Organization to “Chinese Huizu Youth Organization” and edited a journal titled Huizu Youth. In 1932, both Xue and Ma Tianying, another delegate who was fluent in French and English and had worked in France as an interpreter during World War I, organized countrywide Muslim protests following several incidents in which Han publishers printed insulting accounts of Islam. Although they sought to pursue a career within the KMT state, the weakness of state power permitted them a degree of freedom to put pressure on the government and to oppose key government policies on issues involving Muslim interests. The Near East delegation's year-long journey to the Islamic heartland in 1938 sheds light on the complex identities and visions of these young men as Chinese patriots and Muslim modernists.

From the beginning of the trip, it was apparent that delegation members viewed the hajj mission as an opportunity to carry out reverse propaganda to the largely non-Muslim Chinese society. Before leaving, the delegation wrote a statement addressed to its “countrymen,” making what was by then a familiar argument, that Muslims were “an important component of the Chinese nation (zhonghua minzu).” Inspired by religion, Muslims “will never be used by the enemy [Japan],” whereas “other nationalities [minzu]in our country may inevitably be fooled [by Japan]” (DIARY, “Zhongguo huijiao jindong fangwentuan xuanyan”). The belief that Muslims were more loyal Chinese citizens than other groups was echoed in the delegation's diary, kept by Xue Wenbo. Before leaving Hong Kong, the delegation met with influential Muslims who had just left Japanese-occupied eastern China and Manchuria. In the diary, Xue contrasted these Muslims’ patriotism with the Manchu's role in Manchukuo, the defection of the Mongolian nobility to Japan, and the distance of Tibet. He argued: “Who could carry the grave responsibility of saving [the nation] and ensuring survival [of the nation]? Only the Han and the Hui” (DIARY, 1). The ordering of the five nationalities (Han, Hui, Manchus, Mongolians, and Tibetans) according to their loyalty and commitment to the nation shows that the concept of “Republic of Five Nationalities” continued to be meaningful in the late 1930s for Sino-Muslim elites in their imagining of the Chinese nation.

The view of Muslims’ special position in China was complemented by a vision of their special place in the Islamic world. In an Arabic pamphlet, the delegates explained how the ongoing Muslim modernist movement enabled the Muslim community to thrive in all aspects of Chinese life (Baathatu al-ihawu al-islamiya as-siniya 1938). The authors argued that the success of the war with Japan would bring much power to Bai Chongxi, a high-ranking Muslim military general in Chiang Kai-shek's government. As a result of the political empowerment of Muslims, “Islam will have a precious chance [to grow]” (Baathatu al-ihawu al-islamiya as-siniya 1938). Even though the delegates wrote instrumentally for a Muslim audience in the Middle East in order to gain Muslim support for China's war against Japan, they expressed a genuine belief that could not be conveniently expressed in China. The belief that the war with Japan provided an opportune time to spread Islam in China was more explicitly expressed in the delegation's diary:

The delegates’ goal of “indoctrinating the entire Chinese nation” was much more radical than the aim they had publicly stated. For these Sino-Muslim elites, religion and nationalism were complementary sources of emotional devotion, and the national crisis allowed them to dream of a China in which Islam and patriotism would also become complementary political forces.

Muslims in countries visited by the group were asked to support their brothers in China out of religious solidarity with their fellow believers. The delegates depicted Japan's aggression in China as one against Islam by highlighting Muslim sufferings. In a farewell letter written to the Egyptians, published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram in May 1938, the delegation asked Egyptian Muslims not to forget their “Muslim brothers in China,” who were suffering from “oppression and humiliation” and the “brutality of the enemy” (Al-Baatha Al-Islamiya a-Siniya 1938). The “enemy” here referred to Japan, which, according to the Chinese delegation, had turned itself into an enemy of the entire Islamic world by attacking Muslims in China.

Addressing Middle Eastern Muslims, the delegates also emphasized their political common ground: both China and Muslim countries were “oppressed” “weak nations” and therefore shared a common cause against imperialism. (Chinese Muslim Near-East Goodwill Mission [CMDNE] 1938). The delegation met with a range of individuals, representing the full diversity of political and religious views within the Islamic world: fundamentalist Saudis and members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, secular Arab nationalists and pan-Islamic groups in India, and Westernized Muslims in Turkey who insisted on the separation of church and state. The Chinese delegation's appeals for an alliance between China and the Islamic world seemed to resonate with Middle Eastern Muslims. For example, on the evening of March 17, 1938, the delegation participated in a meeting attended by six-hundred people that was held by the Egyptian Muslim Youths Society. According to the accounts of the delegates, one speaker, a Palestinian youth, said that China and Palestine were both “weak nations” and Chinese Muslims and Palestinian Muslims were brothers in trouble. The President of Al-Azhar University noted that Japan's aggression in China was one episode in the history of imperialism threatening weak nations (DIARY 166). These comments, while non-consequential, were what the Chinese delegates needed to hear from Middle Eastern Muslims as they confirmed the delegates’ view of their own role in the proposed Chinese alliance with the Islamic world.

While in the Muslim heartland, the delegates also diligently played their self-appointed role in China's nation-building project as the intermediary between Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang and the Chinese central government.Footnote ⁸ After the suppression of Turkic Muslim rebellions in Xinjiang, many Uyghur leaders were exiled to Russia and the Middle East, and some ended up in Mecca. The Saudi government acknowledged Turkic Muslims’ uncertain place in the Chinese nation-state, arranging for Uyghur pilgrims from Xinjiang to live in a separate location in Mecca with a separate guide, for example (DIARY repr. 1997, 74).

Some of the Sino-Muslim delegates had previously had extensive experience attempting to serve as a bridge to Turkic Muslims living outside of China. During his student days in Turkey, the head of the delegation, Wang Zengshan, had organized several thousand Chinese expatriates, mostly Uyghurs, to sign a petition asking the Chinese government to establish diplomatic relations with Ankara (DIARY repr. 1997, 515-529). Because of his knowledge of the Turkic world, Wang took an interest in the Uyghur issue in Xinjiang. In 1931, he accompanied Dai Jitao, president of the Nationalist Party's Examination Yuan, on a visit to Xinjiang and recruited about a dozen Uyghur Muslim youths to study in Nanjing (Quan [1961] Reference Quan1997, 512).

Meeting with Uyghur exiles in Mecca, Wang Zengshan and other delegates argued that all past ills in the governance of Xinjiang were caused by wicked local overlords and the Soviet Union. The central government, they informed the Uyghurs, was well intentioned toward the Uyghurs. It would allow the Uyghurs to have autonomy and would help improve their livelihoods (DIARY, 110-112).

Unlike Sino-Muslims, Turkic Muslims from Xinjiang did not share the culture of the majority of the Chinese population, nor did they enjoy extensive political and economic ties with China proper. Unsurprisingly, many of them found the Japanese promise of political self-rule and economic aid attractive. An elderly Uyghur named Muhammad Sulita, for example, showed the delegation a journal in Uyghur (xinjiang yu) that was printed in Tokyo. The journal's cover featured the national flags of Japan, Italy, and Germany, as well as a logo containing a sun and a moon. Sulita explained that the sun represented Japan and the moon the Islamic world, and he argued that the anti-communist alliance formed by Japan, Italy, and Germany represented the true hope for Muslims living in Chinese territories (DIARY, 110-112).

The exchange between Sino-Muslim and Uyghur leaders in Mecca shows the complex nature of China's nation-building project in the early twentieth century. The Sino-Muslim delegates, while bonding with Turkic Muslims on the basis of their common religious faith, shared the view of Xinjiang's place in China held by Han nationalist leaders: the integrity of the territorially bound Chinese nation-state could only be maintained by incorporating Xinjiang and its populations into China.

The Al-Azhar Student Delegation

Perhaps in response to the Near East delegation, which was widely covered in news reports and Japanese diplomatic cables from the Middle East, Japan prepared to send its own Chinese hajj mission to the Middle East in December 1938. Soon after occupying Beijing in July 1937, the Japanese army had established the Chinese General Association for Islam in order to manage Muslims in Japanese-controlled areas of China (Bodde October 1946, 330; Yu Reference Yu1996, 422-23). This organization, which successfully attracted some prominent Muslims in Japanese-occupied areas, immediately started to carry out an aggressive campaign to win Muslim support for Japanese rule through publishing activities and the formation of a Muslim Youth Corps. Sponsored by this organization, the hajj group, called “the Northern China Hajj Delegation,” consisted of five Sino-Muslims, three of whom were imams. The delegation had a clear political aim: assuring both Muslims in Japanese-controlled areas and Muslim communities across the Middle East that the Japanese occupation would not be harmful to Muslim interests (Tang Reference Tang1939). Carrying expensive presents such as silk, tea, and bracelets, the Japanese-sponsored delegation left Shanghai on January 4, 1939 (Pang Reference Pang2005). In a letter to the Saudi King drafted on January 19, delegation members wrote that “Muslims from Northern China Liu Derun, Tang Yichen, Ma Liangpu, Su Ruixiang, and Zhang Ying have come to Kaaba of your respectable country to pay pilgrimage….Northern China is currently quite peaceful and Muslims are living in security and happy with their life” (Tang Reference Tang1939). The delegation arrived in Saudi Arabia on January 28 (Tang Reference Tang1939). The Near East delegation was traveling back to China during the months of December 1938 and January 1939, so it could not effectively react to the propaganda issued by the northern China delegation. However, Sino-Muslims who worked in the GMD government swiftly coordinated a response to the efforts of the Japanese-sponsored mission.

On the evening of January 1, 1939, Sun Shengwu, a Sino-Muslim member of the Mongolian-Tibetan Committee of the GMD government, received a telegraph about the Japanese-sponsored mission (Sun Shengwu Reference Sun1963, 321). Sun immediately telegraphed Ha Decheng, a prominent imam and Muslim modernist in Shanghai, asking him to use all his efforts to halt the delegation. Imam Ha, an advisor to the GMD Military Committee, persuaded the British Embassy not to issue Egyptian visas to the delegation (Sun Shengwu Reference Sun1963, 321), forcing the delegates to take a route through Ethiopia instead of going through Egypt. Perceiving that the Japanese-sponsored delegation had not been checked, Sun submitted a request to Kong Xiangxi, president of the Executive Yuan, asking the government to provide funding for Sino-Muslim students in Cairo to form a counter hajj delegation to Mecca. The purpose of the student delegation would be to shadow the Japanese delegates and “harass them so that their plot would not be carried out” (Sun Shengwu Reference Sun1939). Sun asked that the Chinese Consulate in Cairo organize the mission and that 500 pounds be allocated to fund it (Sun Shengwu Reference Sun1939).Footnote ⁹

Kong approved the plan, and the Foreign Ministry sent cables to its consulate in Cairo with specific instructions about the intended mission. At the same time, Sun and three prominent Muslim modernist leaders, Tang Keshan, Imam Da Pusheng, and Imam Ma Songting, sent a separate note to the students at Al-Azhar University in Cairo asking them to form a pilgrimage mission (Chinese Consulate in Egypt 1939; Ma and Pang Reference Ma and Pang1939). The students were given the duty of watching over the Japanese-sponsored hajj delegation and “advocating [for China] when convenient” (Ma and Pang Reference Ma and Pang1939).

The students in Egypt represented a young generation of Sino-Muslims whose visions for their community and country were increasingly becoming globally oriented. While seeking religious orthodoxy and Islamic cultural authenticity in Egypt, these students were influenced by Islamic modernism, which sanctioned secular nationalism and legitimized the Sino-Muslim identification with Chinese nationalist causes (Mao Reference Mao2007). At the time, Al-Azhar University was a center of Islamic modernism. Ma Jian, one of the two leaders of the student delegation, translated into Chinese Risalat al-Tauhid (The Theology of Unity) by the famous modernist thinker Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905). Ma's choice of this work as the first Arabic book he translated into Chinese reflected his own modernist leanings. In his Arabic publications, Ma frequently articulated his dual loyalties to the Islamic umma and to China (Makin [Ma Jian] Reference Makin1935).

On January 23, 1939, twenty-eight students boarded Thar-Thar, a hajj ship to Mecca, both as pilgrims and as propagandists opposing the Japanese-sponsored mission (Ma and Pang Reference Ma and Pang1939). According to student accounts, they encountered the Japanese-sponsored delegation immediately after arriving in Mecca on the evening of January 28, 1939 (Ma and Pang Reference Ma and Pang1939). At the Saudi king's reception for Chinese pilgrims, the GMD-sponsored students reportedly pressured their Japanese-sponsored counterparts not to reveal their Japanese sponsorship while the students spoke to the Saudi king about the determination of “all Chinese people” to resist the Japanese (Pang Reference Pang2005). On February 12, the students invited the Japanese-sponsored delegates to dinner and lectured them on their “huge mistake” in coming to Mecca. Such an act, the students charged, provided Japan with useful propaganda material (Ma and Pang Reference Ma and Pang1939). Later, in the student delegates’ memorandum to the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Shijie, they described how, after being moved by their appeals, the Japanese-sponsored delegates promised to tell Muslims under Japanese occupation to postpone hajj trips. The Japanese-sponsored delegates were also said to have “sworn by their faith to never again serve Japan” (Ma and Pang Reference Ma and Pang1939).Footnote ¹⁰

Selling the Vision at Home

Several PRC scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim alike, have written about Muslim participation in China's war against Japan, including the hajj missions. They depict the motivation of the Muslim participants as purely patriotic (Tie and Li Reference Tie and Li1995). The portrayal of Muslims solely as proud citizens is consistent with the official narrative describing China's nation-building process as natural and uncontested. At the same time, Muslim authors, like Sino-Muslim modernists active during the Republican era, are interested in portraying their community members as true patriots and have been unwilling to acknowledge any alternative motives mission participants might have had. Thus, lost in the Chinese discussion of the missions is the fact that the missions allowed Sino-Muslims to appropriate a state cause to advance their own goals. Reports and letters found in archives, written by these participants and delivered to top officials in the GMD government, reveal how the delegates tried to influence the Chinese government and society.

After returning to China, both delegations widely publicized their patriotic activities and the accomplishments of the missions. They reported success in changing the attitudes of people in the Middle East, ordinary citizens and prime ministers alike. They claimed to have won both moral support and concrete support in the form of donated medical materials and a boycott of Japanese goods (Wang Zengshan Reference Wang1938). Articles in Muslim journals also raved about the missions’ success, announcing that the student mission “destroyed the Japanese ploy” (Anonymous 1939).Footnote ¹¹ In reality, it is difficult to assess the actual achievements of the missions. Since the Russo-Japanese war, Japan enjoyed significant prestige in the Islamic world and Japan's efforts to win the goodwill of the Muslim world further enhanced a favorable view of Japan in the Middle East (Esenbel Reference Esenbel2004). In any case, Sino-Muslim modernists highlighted their accomplishments in order to advance their other goals.

Citing their success, mission participants urged Chinese leaders to strengthen relations with the Muslim world. In his memorandum to Chiang Kai-shek, written in April 1939, Wang Zengshan invoked Sun Yat-sen's views about anti-imperialism and “weak nations” and classified countries in the Middle East as among those with which Sun had instructed the KMT to unite:

The government and people of every country [in the Near East] that our delegation visited genuinely sympathize with us. They are indeed the nations that treat us as equals. We believe that our government should, according to the premier's [Sun Yat-sen's] last will, unite with [these countries]…. (CMDNE, May 11, 1939)

While Sino-Muslim leaders had been advocating a strong Chinese relationship with the Islamic world for several decades, the missions’ claimed success provided additional backing for the argument about how the common victim-of-imperialism identity made China and Muslim countries natural allies. In the Near East delegation's 1939 memorandum to Chiang Kai-shek, the delegates, calling for the establishment of diplomatic relations with “Muslim countries in the Near East (jindong huijiao guo),” recommended “taking the initiative to send ambassadors and consuls” (CMDNE, May 11, 1939). Similarly, the student mission suggested that the government set up a consulate in Saudi Arabia to promote trade and to forestall the establishment of a consulate representing the Japanese puppet government in Beijing (Ma and Pang Reference Ma and Pang1939).

In offering the GMD government detailed recommendations for improving relations with countries in the Middle East, the delegates emphasized the indispensable role Sino-Muslims could play in diplomatic relations with countries in the Islamic world. In the letter sent to Chiang Kai-shek from Egypt, the Near East delegation emphasized how the students’ religious connections with the Middle East could serve China's diplomatic goals. The letter mentioned that the Egyptian King Farouk paid for the students’ expenses because he felt a religious bond with them. To take advantage of such religious connections, efforts to improve Chinese-Egyptian relations should start with religious exchanges and exchange of students (Wang Zengshan, May 14, Reference Wang1938). More importantly, the delegations recommended employing Muslims in diplomatic posts, in a “Near East Cultural Association,” and in religious exchanges and propaganda efforts carried out in Middle Eastern languages (CMDNE, May 11, 1939).

The delegates’ memos also attempted to appropriate for Sino-Muslims a role as spokespersons for Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. The first delegation reported that most of the approximately six thousand Uyghur Muslims living in Mecca supported Generalissimo Chiang but had left Xinjiang due to the persecution of local strongmen. As a result of the delegates’ efforts, the report claimed, “many decided to return to China” (Central Propaganda Department 1939). Similarly, the students reported to have tried to convince the Uyghur Muslims of the good intentions of the GMD government and that this effort “received satisfying results” (Ma and Pang Reference Ma and Pang1939). Both delegations thus recommended establishing diplomatic posts in Saudi Arabia to protect Chinese pilgrims and Uyghur Muslims living in Mecca (CMDNE, May 11, 1939) (Ma and Pang, February 1939). The reports and recommendations about the Uyghur Muslims in Mecca received attention from the Central Propaganda Department and the Executive Yuan (Central Propaganda Department 1939). Responding to their recommendation, the Chinese government established its first consulate in Saudi Arabia and Wang Shiming, a member of the first delegation, was appointed deputy consul (Kainan Yusuf Ma Reference Ma1988).

The hajj missions during World War II were in many ways the culmination of decades-long effort by Sino-Muslim elites to participate in nation building and advance their political and social standing in China. The precedent set by the hajj missions allowed Muslims to strengthen their position in the GMD government and to influence China's foreign relations. In addition to appointing Wang Shiming as the first Chinese diplomat to Saudi Arabia, Chiang ordered the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Education, and the International Propaganda Department to implement other recommendations of the delegation (Office of the Supreme National Defense Council, May 20, 1939). As a result, one of the Al-Azhar students, Zhang Binduo, was assigned to the Central Broadcasting Station to start an Arabic program (Central Broadcasting Station, July 13, 1939). Later, another student, Hai Weiliang, assumed positions at the Chinese Embassy in Iran (Hai Weiliang Reference Hai1942). Muslims who assumed positions in the diplomatic posts and other government institutions continued to call for an anti-imperialist alliance between China and the Islamic world (Hai Weiliang Reference Hai1942; Wang Shiming Reference Wang1943).Footnote ¹²

Conclusion

In this story, the relationship between state and Sino-Muslim elites is not one of appropriation (of Muslims by the GMD state) and resistance (by Muslims to the GMD state) because the dualism of appropriation and resistance assumes the existence of a rigid state-society dichotomy and an unequal power relationship between the two. Instead, this story shows how a group of Sino-Muslims influenced state policies as they tried to construct their ethno-religious community's place in China according to an alternative vision of the nation. These Sino-Muslims were not passive players in the nation-building process, nor were they single-minded patriotic citizens with no alternative motives.

The transnational visions and actions of Chinese delegates to Mecca during WWII were informed simultaneously by conditions in the globalizing world, the Muslim heartlands, and China. The dominance of imperialism in global politics during the first half of the twentieth century gave rise to a perceived common cause between China and the Islamic world, allowing Sino-Muslim modernists to reconcile their goals as pious Muslim and Chinese patriots. Intellectual trends in the Islamic world sanctioned secular nationalism and legitimized Muslim identification with Chinese nationalist causes. And the relative weakness of the emerging Chinese nation-state allowed Muslims to imagine a powerful place for themselves in the new polity and encouraged them to push an agenda seeking a greater Muslim role in China's domestic and foreign affairs.

Equally importantly, this story shows the interconnectedness of global realities, transnational ideas and national discourses. Chinese Muslim pilgrimage missions in Mecca took place at the intersections between globalization and the making of the nation-state. A firmly bounded (territorially and politically based) Chinese national identity did not preclude Sino-Muslim elites from simultaneously championing a transnational (religiously and culturally based) Muslim identity. Instead, these Sino-Muslims skillfully used the master narrative of anti-imperialism to construct a transnational self (China and the Islamic world) in relation to a transnational other (Western and Japanese imperialism), in order to carefully advance the ethno-religious interests of their own community.