China investigates official who promoted respect for Islam

Probe of Wang Zhengwei, a former top official in charge of ethnic policy, helps Communist Party clear a path to fully embrace new assimilation campaign.

Wang Zhengwei, pictured in Beijing in May 2020. Picture: China News Service via Getty Images

China’s Communist Party has authorised a corruption inquiry into a senior official who was previously an influential advocate of Muslim culture, according to people familiar with the matter, in a signal of President Xi Jinping’s resolve to push ahead with the country’s aggressive ethnic assimilation efforts.

Wang Zhengwei, a member of China’s Muslim Hui minority and currently a vice-chairman of China’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, is under investigation by the party’s internal disciplinary watchdogs for abuse of power and corruption, the people said.

The investigation was prompted by concerns that Mr Wang had promoted “unrestrained Muslim culture” and encouraged religious extremism when he served as Communist Party chief of his home region of Ningxia in China’s northwest, and later as head of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, the agency in charge of implementing ethnic policy, the people said.

No formal criminal charges have been announced against Mr Wang. Party discipline investigations, which are often used to punish officials who step out of line with the party’s priorities, can be more wide-ranging than police investigations, and the results aren’t always made public.

It is rare for a leading ethnic affairs official to face such a probe. Mr Wang’s successor as head of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, an ethnic Mongol, was replaced by a Han Chinese official in late 2020, though he doesn’t face a formal graft inquiry.

Mr Wang, who studied the economic structures of Muslim countries as a graduate student, spent much of his career in Ningxia, which has a large population of Chinese Muslims.

While posted there and at the National Ethnic Affairs Committee, he pushed for legislation promoting certification of halal foods and encouraged the building of mosques on a relatively grand scale – actions seen by senior Chinese officials as strengthening ethnic identification to the detriment of national unity, according to the people.

The investigation arrives as Beijing moves to embrace a “second generation” ethnic policy, loosely inspired by the American melting-pot ideal, which emphasises the importance of forging a single Chinese identity regardless of race.

China previously offered minority communities nominal political autonomy alongside preferential policies such as extra points on the country’s competitive university entrance examinations and exemptions from family planning rules.

Growing resentment among Han Chinese of those policies, coupled with outbursts of ethnic violence in Xinjiang and Tibet, have led Mr Xi and other party leaders to move toward more aggressive assimilation.

The architects of the new approach have been involved in implementing the campaign in Xinjiang, which researchers estimate has led to a million or more Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims being sent to a network of internment camps.

Speaking to officials from China’s Inner Mongolia region during national legislative meetings earlier this month, Mr Xi emphasised a need to ensure education that cultivates a sense of ethnic unity, which he described as “the lifeline of all ethnic groups in the country”.

Officials are combing through existing laws related to ethnic issues to see how they can be revised to conform to guidance from Mr Xi, according to one person familiar with the discussions.

The legislature is already considering a change to a law governing local governments that would remove a requirement to “respect ethnic minority customs” and replace it with a clause requiring “protection of the freedom of ethnic minorities to maintain or improve their customs”.

The investigation into Mr Wang suggests Mr Xi is “clearing the cobwebs away” in preparation for a changeover in ethnic policy personnel at a twice-a-decade Communist Party congress at the end of the year, according to James Leibold, an expert in Chinese ethnic policy at Melbourne’s La Trobe University.

“Xi will certainly be looking to place his folks in charge and remove any of the last remaining barriers to his assimilationist push,” Professor Leibold said.

The Wall Street Journal