Bin Chen, "Hui Muslims in the Shaping of Modern China: Education, Frontier Politics, and Nation-State" (Routledge, 2025)

Feb 16, 2026

Bin Chen, Assistant Professor of modern Chinese history at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and author on Hui Muslims in modern China, discusses Muslim teacher schools, Nationalist policy toward frontier regions, and how fluid Hui identities enabled political collaboration. He also explores wartime school relocations and long-term impacts like Arabic skills shaping diplomacy.

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INSIGHT

Selective Enforcement For Frontier Influence

The 1933 Teachers' Schools Regulation banned private teachers' schools but was selectively enforced for Muslim schools.
The Nationalist state funded private Muslim teacher schools to gain influence in the northwest frontier despite legal contradictions.

INSIGHT

Schools As Strategic Frontier Tools

Frontier politics made Muslim teacher schools strategic assets for Nanjing to project influence where it lacked direct control.
Ma Fuxiang used Chengda as a bridge to modernize the northwest while the state gained agents of modernization.

INSIGHT

Hui Identity's Productive Ambiguity

Hui identity in the Republican period was fluid and context-dependent, encompassing religion, ethnicity, and territory.
Chen argues that this ambiguity became a resource that enabled cooperation between the state, warlords, and Hui elites.

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Chen examines the Chinese Nationalist government's distinctive support for private Muslim teachers schools between the 1920s and 1940s, and explores the complex relationship between these institutions and the Chinese state during the Republican period.

In 1933, the government issued the Teachers Schools Regulations, mandating that all teachers schools be state-run. However, the Nationalists viewed private Muslim teachers schools as valuable allies in their efforts to assert influence in China’s Muslim-dominated northwestern frontier region and deliberately refrained from enforcing the 1933 Teachers Schools Regulations on them. Instead, the government applied the 1933 Amended Private Schools Regulations, which did not specifically address teachers schools, to govern Muslim teachers schools. By charting the evolving dynamics between the Nationalist state and Chinese Hui Muslims, Hui Muslims in the Shaping of Modern China: Education, Frontier Politics, and Nation-State (Routledge, 2025) reevaluates the Hui Muslims’ role in shaping modern China.

Offering crucial context on the role of Islam in modern China, this book is a valuable resource for scholars and students of Chinese history, as well as for policymakers and journalists interested in religion in China.

Bin Chen is Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his PhD from Pennsylvania State University, and his research interests include China’s modern transition and Islam in China. His publications have appeared in The Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Modern Chinese History, International Journal of Asian Studies, and others.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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