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, studies Hui Muslims and education in Republican China. He discusses private Muslim teacher schools, why the Nationalist state tolerated them, shifting frontier politics during wartime, and the long-term impacts of Arabic-trained Hui on diplomacy. Multiple episodes explore identity, reform, patronage, and nationalization.

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ANECDOTE

University Moment That Sparked Research

Bin Chen describes first encountering Hui classmates in university and being surprised by their Mandarin fluency despite non-Han ethnicity.
That encounter sparked his curiosity about ethnic diversity and led him to study Northwestern China and Hui history.

INSIGHT

Selective Enforcement Of Education Laws

The 1933 Teachers' Schools Regulation banned private teachers' schools but the Nationalist state selectively exempted Muslim teacher schools.
This contradiction reveals strategic state flexibility driven by frontier politics and practical needs.

INSIGHT

Schools As Frontier Strategy

The Nationalist government lacked direct control in the northwest and used local Muslim elites as bridges to project influence.
Supporting Muslim teacher schools became a low-cost strategy to modernize and pacify frontier regions.

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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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