Major Arabic-style mosque in China's Yunnan undergoes sinification

On February 1, 2024, the Chinese government revised regulations and tightened controls over religious practices, focusing on "Sinicizing" religions, to make places of worship and religious teachings better reflect Han Chinese culture.

The Guardian in its recent report has highlighted that the last major mosque in China to have retained Arabic-style features has lost its domes and had its minarets radically modified, marking what experts say is the completion of a government campaign to sinicise the country’s Muslim places of worship.

The Grand Mosque of Shadian, one of China’s biggest and grandest mosques, towers over the small town from which it takes its name in south-western Yunnan province.

Until last year, the 21,000 square metre complex featured a large building topped with a tiled green dome, adorned with a crescent moon, flanked by four smaller domes and soaring minarets. Satellite imagery from 2022 shows the entrance pavilion decorated with a large crescent moon and star made from vivid black tiles.

Photographs, satellite imagery and witness accounts from this year show that the dome has been removed and replaced with a Han Chinese-style pagoda rooftop, and the minarets have been shortened and converted into pagoda towers. Only a faint trace of the crescent moon and star tiles that once marked the mosque’s front terrace is visible.

Yunnan’s other landmark mosque, Najiaying, less than 100 miles from Shadian, also recently had its Islamic features removed in a renovation.

In 2018 the Chinese government published a five-year plan on the "sinification of Islam". Part of the plan was to resist "foreign architectural styles" and to promote "Islamic architecture that is full of Chinese characteristics".

A leaked Chinese Communist party memo shows that local authorities were instructed to "adhere to the principle of demolishing more and building less".

Hui Muslims

First built during the Ming dynasty, the Grand Mosque of Shadian was destroyed during the cultural revolution in an uprising known as the Shadian incident, in which the People’s Liberation Army suppressed an uprising of Hui Muslims in the area. More than 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed.

The Grand Mosque was later rebuilt and expanded with government support. Its design was based on the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, where Muhammad is believed to be buried. It has three prayer halls and capacity for 10,000 worshippers.

The Hui are a Chinese Muslim ethnic minority, most of whom live in western China. There are more than 11 million Hui people, according to the 2020 census, a similar population to Uighurs.

One of the Grand Mosque’s modifications is the addition of Chinese characters underneath the gold-plated Arabic writing on the front of the building. The Chinese text reads: “The imperial palace of supreme truth”, a Taoist term that is also used in Chinese Islam. But it has not been previously associated with Shadian’s mosque.

The Grand Mosque of Shadian appears to have reopened in April, in time for Eid. A video from inside the prayer hall shows that several surveillance cameras have been installed. In 2020 the mosque management committee refused a request from the authorities to install surveillance cameras, said the former mosque employee.

Five sources with knowledge of the local environment in Shadian said wireless speakers had been distributed to households to broadcast the call to prayer, since public calls are generally banned, raising concerns about surveillance.

A Chinese government spokesperson responding to The Guardian report said: "Respecting and protecting freedom of religious belief has been a basic policy of the Chinese government. The Chinese government protects normal and lawful religious activities by the Regulations on Religious Affairs and other relevant laws and regulations, attaches great importance to the protection and renovation of religious sites including mosques, and ensures the normal religious needs and safety of believers."