Religious Homogamy under the Chinese State: Hui Muslim’s Choice, 1949-2005

Zheng Mu, National University of Singapore Qing Lai, Florida International University

This paper examines, through the behavioral lens of marriage, the relations between the Hui Muslims and Han majority in China between 1949 and 2005.

The ethnic label Hui applies to China’s largest Muslim community, also the second largest ethnic minority group. With a census enumeration of 10.6 million, Hui alone constitute 46% of China’s Muslim population in 2010. As a stateless Muslim group, Hui have lived in peace with their neighbors in China for centuries since their ancestors came from Arabian Peninsula, Persia, and other Islamic regimes in Central Asia between the 7th and 13th centuries. By the 17th century, Hui ancestors were well assimilated into the demographically dominating Han in terms of genetic, socioeconomic, and cultural-linguistic aspects. In today’s China, Hui carry more resemblance to the Han majority than any other ethnic groups with regard to residential, socioeconomic, and population structures. Despite high levels of assimilation, for centuries Hui have maintained a distinctive Muslim identity. It was based on this religious identity that the Hui were officially recognized by the Communist state in the 1950s as a separate from the Han, while linguistic criteria was used in the identification of all other ethnic minorities. The duality of close assimilation with the Han and persistent inheritance of Islam, therefore, is the key to understanding Hui’s ethnoreligious identity.

Marriage has played a critical role in the making of Hui’s dual ethnoreligious identity. On the one hand, it was the extensive with the Han in history that led to Hui’s genetic and structural assimilations with Han. At the grassroots level, the phrase hui die han ma (回爹汉妈 , Islamic father and Han mother) is commonly referred to by Hui themselves as a convenient account of their own origin. The impact of Han parents is so manifest that today’s Hui, in public and their own perceptions, are essentially Chinese-looking and Chinese-speaking Muslims. On the other hand, as a religiously homogenous community, Hui’s has been instrumental in preserving their Muslim identity across generations, which was recognized as the mainstream of Hui marriage in numerous folklores, official archives, and scholarly literature. How Hui chose their marriage partners in contemporary times, therefore, provides an ideal angle to examine the evolving Hui identity and their coexistence with the Han majority under the socialist Chinese state.

The 2005 1% Chinese Inter-Census Survey, by recording information on the timing of marriage, makes it possible to document the post-1949 trends of Hui endogamy and Hui-Han intermarriage at the population level. We found that Hui-Han intermarriage surged during the Socialist transformation in the 1950s and then continued to increase throughout the Cultural Revolution. In the Reform period, the counteracting forces of marketization and Islamic revivals have driven the marriage trends in difference directions (Cf. Figure 1).

Besides documenting the trends, we also estimated clustered discrete-time competing-risk models to test major community-level influences (i.e., local marriage markets, strength of Islamic culture, economic growth) on Hui’s marriage choices since the 1978 market reform. Results show that the number of unmarried Hui individuals and the level of Hui residential concentration in local areas positively contribute to one’s likelihood of endogamy. Notably, increase in GDP per capita also leads Hui men to stronger propensity to choose endogamy, which shows the enabling role of economic growth in the preservation of Hui’s Muslim identity (Cf. Table 1).

Figure 1. Hui endogamy and Hui-Han intermarriage, 1949-2005 25 100

20 90

15 80

10 70 Han Intermarriage - % Hui Endogamy Hui % 5 60 % Hui

0 50 1949 1956 1963 1970 1977 1984 1991 1998 2005 Year of Marriage

Hui Husband & Han Wife Han Husband & Hui Wife Hui Endogamy

Table 1. Multinomial discrete-time logit models predicting marriage outcomes Endogamy/ Intermarriage/ Intermarriage/ Single Single Endogamy Wald χ 2 (2) Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Panel A. Male sample (N=33,826) Logged single Han women 0.9 1.0 1.0 1.0 Logged single Hui women 1.1 0.9 * 0.8 * 6.7 * % Hui population 1.7 0.0 * 0.0 ** 8.3 * Logged GDP per capita 1.0 0.7 *** 0.7 * 13.7 **

Panel B. Female sample (N=25,922) Logged single Han men 0.9 * 1.2 † 1.3 ** 8.5 * Logged single Hui men 1.0 0.8 *** 0.8 *** 19.7 *** % Hui population 1.9 0.0 * 0.0 * 7.6 * Logged GDP per capita 1.0 0.8 † 0.8 † 3.8 Notes: Relative risk coefficients are reported on odds ratio metric. Statistical signifance levels are based on clustered standard errors adjusted at the prefecture level. Z-statistics are ratios between the logit coeficients and cluster-adjusted robust standard errors. Control variables include historical year, personal age, years of eudcation, hukou type (urban vs. rural), and regional dummies. All variables in the models are time-varying on yearly basis, except for gender, hukou type, and provinces. Sources: 2005 Chinese Inter-Census Survey (analytic N = 59,748 person-year records); Chinese Census Microdata 1982, 1990, 2000; Various Yearbooks.