The 1975 Shadian Massacre
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Islamic Religiosity, Revolution, and State Violence in Southwest China: The 1975 Shadian Massacre by Xian Wang A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (Asia Pacific Policy Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2013 © Xian Wang, 2013 Abstract The 1975 Shadian conflict was the largest religious rebellion of the Cultural Revolution, however, its political and social impacts have been neglected by both mainstream western scholars and the Chinese state-sponsored historical account. The event also has remained a controversial issue in China, in Yunnan, and of course in Shadian itself. The unresolved questions of the Shadian massacre and the inability of the Chinese government and local community to come to resolution are the focus of this thesis. By stressing the agency of the Shadian villagers and focusing on the interactions between the Shadian villagers and local authorities, it seeks to explain why the conflict between the Shadian Muslims and the government has persisted, even after the CCP redressed the massacre in 1979 and has changed its religious policies in order to cultivate Islamic revival in today’s Yunnan. Although the communist party-state has aimed to strengthen the socio-political stability of China by undertaking state-sponsored projects, such as rebuilding mosques, opening Islamic schools and so forth, to encourage public practice of Islam in Shadian; it maintains the Cultural Revolution-period mentality (radical secularism and atheism) and continues to deny Islamic religion as the very fundamental virtue that shapes the way the Shadian Muslims understand their religious—Muslim (rather than ethnic—the Hui) identities and the way in which they interact with the communist state. The conflicts and struggles between the Shadian Muslims and the CCP government in the Mao and the post-Mao period reflect the constant power dynamics between the local authorities’ denial of the religious centrality of Islam and the determination of Shadian villagers to define their ethnic identities based on Islam. While the CCP denies the religious motivation of the Shadian Muslim’s resistance by constantly regarding the villagers as reactionaries who always intended to make a disturbance, the Shadian villagers continues to emphasize their Muslim identities by regarding their resistance against the local authorities as ii religiously glorious and just, meaningful in just the sense that Geertz suggested. As a result, down to today, the mutual understanding between the CCP authorities and the Muslim communities therefore has not been established. iii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………. ii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………..iv Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………...vi Dedication…………………………………………………………………………viii 1 Introduction………………………………………………………………….1 1.1 The 1975 Shadian Massacre: An Ongoing State-Community Conflict.......................................................................................................... 1 1.2 The “Hui” Ethnicity and the Historical Background of Shadian……….8 2 The Early Cultural Revolution in Shadian—The Development of the Conflict (1964-1971)………………………………………………………...11 2.1 Party Religious Policy Before 1964 and the Four Cleanups in Shadian (1957-1964)………………………………………………………13 2.2 The Factional Division—Paopai and Bapai (1966-1968)………………..16 2.3 The Establishment of the YRC and the Second Democratic Revolution (1968-1970)……………………………………………………23 3 The Exacerbation of the Conflict and the Massacre (1971-1975)……………………………………………………...33 3.1 The Shadian Muslims’ Repeated Petitions in the Early 1970s…………33 3.2 The Party Centre’s Decision to Crackdown on the Villagers’ Resistance..………………………………………………………………...40 4 The Aftermath of the Shadian Massacre (1975-2007)…………………....46 4.1 Crackdown and Arrests Following the Massacre (1975-1976)…………46 iv 4.2 The CCP’s Redress of the Massacre during Reform (1976-1980)……...51 4.3 The CCP’s Promotion of an Islamic Revival (1981-2007)………………62 5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..68 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………….72 v Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Timothy Cheek and external-supervisor Professor Jeremy Brown for their tremendous support and knowledgeable advice for the research and writing of my MA thesis. I learned how to strengthen and clarify my argument each time from Dr. Cheek’s detailed and constructive comments on my works. His intellectual wisdom always inspires me to engage critical thinking and questioning for my MA studies. Whenever I encounter difficulties during my research, Dr. Brown never stops encouraging and advising me to overcome the hardships. His rigorous scholarship and approach to researching modern China have influenced me deeply since the first day I took his class as an undergraduate student. I learned how to improve my writing each time from his detailed feedback on my works. I benefited so much from working with Dr. Cheek and Dr. Brown, and I am very fortunate to have them as my MA thesis supervisors. I also wish to thank Professor Tsering Shakya, who taught me to interpret the terms such as religion, ethnicity, and nationality with careful and critical manner. His knowledge and specialty on religion offered me so much inspiration for my MA thesis research and writing. I am thankful to Professor Paul Evans, who keeps reminding me to seek balance between studying and having fun when I became stressed during my studies. His warm encouragement and appreciation for me made me want to continuously pursue an academic career. This research is mainly funded by SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Master’s Scholarship. I am grateful to the SSHRC grant committee that offered me this generous financial support to help me complete my field research in China. During my stay in Yunnan, I received so much help from my former classmates and teachers, and the Shadian villagers who pleasantly provided me with advice and information for my project. I owe special thanks to their assistance. I am extremely fortunate to have a great family that offers unconditional support and everlasting inspiration to me. My mother taught me to stay strong and never give up whenever I vi am facing discouragement and difficulties. She always urges me to discover my potentials in pursuing an academic career. My father is my first teacher who taught me to read books and to think critically. Since I was little, he has been discussing with me about the future of China and Chinese people who are confronted with suppression and injustice. His influence inspired me to choose and write about this topic. During my field research, he provided me with the most important and best assistance. Without him, my research would not have proceeded. Finally, I wish to express the depth of my gratitude to my husband Alain Aubin. I am forever grateful to his unconditional comfort, support, understanding, and love to me during my years of studies. Without him, I would not have come to this far. Dedication vii To the Victims of the 1975 Shadian Conflict viii 1. Introduction 1.1 The 1975 Shadian Massacre: An Ongoing State-Community Conflict In the middle of the night on July 29, 1975, the central Chinese government deployed several People’s Liberation Army (PLA) units to raid Shadian and surrounding Muslim villages in southern Yunnan province. After a week of intensive attacks with heavy artillery and MIG jets, Shadian was completely razed, with 4,400 houses destroyed and 1,600 villagers killed. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), religion was one of the “four olds” that needed to be destroyed. The Muslims in Shadian were thus violently targeted and humiliated by the Han majority for their “backward” religious customs and practices. Conflicts between the two groups escalated in 1974 when the Jijie United Headquarters of People’s Militia (JUHPM) supported by the local government was formed to oversee the Muslim community after Shadian Muslims organized a protest of more than 800 people in Kunming, the provincial capital, requesting that the Chinese government respect freedom of religion. Accused of “making a disturbance” and “opposing the leadership of the Party,” Shadian Muslims resisted the government by forming their own Muslim Militia to obstruct the JUHPM and the PLA troops sent by the government from entering Shadian village. During this period, Muslim representatives from Shadian went to Beijing to negotiate with the central government. The negotiation lasted for almost half a year but ended with the central leaders’ insistence on deploying the PLA troops and official work teams to Shadian village to enforce control over the Muslim populace. The Shadian villagers continued to resist the official decision.1 This conflict between the Party and the Shadian 1 Shadian Huizu shiliao (Historical Materials on Shadian) (Kaiyuan: Kaiyuanshi yinshuachang, 1989), 46-57; Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 137-140; Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2006), 387-388. 1 Muslims continued to develop along with the external factional conflicts under the radical context of the Cultural Revolution, which eventually led to the Party Centre’s decision to use the state military forces to crackdown the villagers’ resistance. Although the Shadian conflict was the largest religious