The Rise and Fall of China's World Muslim City: Halal Culture, Mosques, and Sufi Shrines in Ningxia (Part 2)
The drives for mobilization and the impulses for control are both evident in the case of the World Muslim City. As noted earlier, for years the World Muslim City enjoyed the backing of Beijing and Ningxia leadership. In 2008, the State Council dispatched a 150-person team composed of 27 ministries to the autonomous region to inspect and draft development plans. The team recommended encouraging "Muslim nations to invest and do business in Ningxia" and developing Ningxia into a "China-Arab economic and trade investment platform"—goals endorsed by the State Council and promised by the World Muslim City (Tan 2010).
One of the highest-profile champions of this development strategy was Wang Zhengwei, who served as deputy party secretary and chairman of the government of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region from 2008 to 2013. A Hui himself, Wang was later promoted to head the State Ethnic Affairs Commission in Beijing. In a 2008 interview, Wang explained that when developing Ningxia’s economy, it made sense to promote its "unique advantages," particularly its distinct Hui identity and culture (Wang and Lian 2008). These advantages included Muslim dietary taboos. During his tenure in Ningxia and beyond, Wang heavily pushed for the standardization and internationalization of the region's halal food processing and certification industry.
Official backing for a Muslim-focused development strategy was noteworthy because, as Wai-Yip Ho points out, Ningxia leadership had long been "hesitant to emphasize its Islamic heritage and build ties with the Muslim ummah" (2013: 84). By the 2000s, however, officials were "keen to reemphasize [Ningxia's] Islamic past and rediscover connections with the Muslim world." Leaders had started viewing the relatively assimilated Hui—the Chinese "good Muslims" described by Yuting Wang (2018)—and their identity and culture as soft power assets for China in its engagements with Muslim nations. This view was backed by think tanks and university researchers who organized conferences and published monographs detailing how Ningxia's unique cultural, geographic, and economic traits could serve China's diplomatic and development goals (Fang 2017; Zhuo and Jiang 2016). One of the recurring themes emphasized in these conferences and publications was the transnational hybridity of the Hui. The Hui minority featured in these narratives is invariably modern, if not postmodern—a globalized people adept at navigating two worlds (the Chinese world and the Islamic world) at once.
For proponents of this development strategy, what made the Hui an asset for China's global ambitions was not just their ethnicity or culture, but their indelible Muslim attributes, which embedded them within the global ummah. Cong Enlin, then vice president of the Islamic Association of China, highlighted this in a 2016 article. A Hui himself, Cong asserted that given the massive Muslim populations residing in countries along the Belt and Road, Chinese Muslims were uniquely positioned to help realize Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative. He described the BRI as "not merely a road of trade," but a "road of religious and cultural exchange," and argued that "Muslim talent" should "play an active role" within it (Enlin 2016: 270–71). Government support for the hajj was also essential because it was through the pilgrimage that "friendships between Chinese Muslims and Muslims around the world are strengthened, and friendly government-to-government relations are established" (ibid.: 269). Cong explained that fully tapping into "religious resources" would allow Chinese Muslim citizens to "spread Chinese wisdom, tell China stories well, amplify China's voice, and make China's public diplomacy more vivid and deeply rooted in people's hearts."
Cong's remarks underscore the enduring nature of "communist multiculturalist" narratives and ideals, which for decades have shaped, to varying degrees, China's governance of diverse peoples across its vast lands (McCarthy 2009). The notion of a multi-ethnic Chinese state—the Chinese nation (*Zhonghua minzu*), a harmonious blend of the Han majority and various minorities—first emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to counter Han supremacist arguments underpinning anti-Manchu and anti-Qing nationalism (Jenco 2019; Jin 2022; Leibold 2007; Tam 2023). The multicultural narrative became more prominent during the communist revolution as the CCP courted the support of non-Han peoples living across vast Chinese territories. David Stroup writes that the party's desire to maintain the "vast and diverse... geographical entity of the former Qing empire" led it to "invoke a grander concept of Chineseness, one that implied multiculturalism, harmony, and equality under the party's leadership" (2022: 37).
Following the Maoist era, the regime encouraged ethnic minorities to restore their distinct cultural practices and identities, even as it remained wary of what it deemed separatism and extremism. This encouragement went beyond mere tolerance, as officials actively promoted the revival of minority cultures—either as a legitimation strategy to boost economic development, or because they were minority members themselves. Ethnic cultural revival could and did function as a mode of resistance, for instance by enabling minorities to reshape collective identities and shed the stigma and trauma suffered under Maoist socialism (Litzinger 1998; Mueggler 2001; Makley 2005). For many minority peoples, however, the expression of ethnic and religious differences constituted a declaration of membership in the Chinese state. In other words, "to be a minority [became]... a way of being a national" (McCarthy 2009: 10).
Although Ningxia’s development strategy and the World Muslim City borrowed from this multicultural national narrative, their articulation disrupted its plot and characterization. In the *Bildungsroman* of the Chinese national story—a tale of past glory, humiliation, struggle, and ultimate triumph—the Han are positioned as the primary protagonists. Inclusive though communist multiculturalism is—and it is quite inclusive, creating space within the national imagination for diverse groups—minorities are cast as supporting actors, if not plot devices, on China's journey toward self-realization. A core trope of this narrative is the notion of the Han as the "big brother" nation who rescues minority brothers and sisters from backwardness by providing civilizational and technical knowledge (Harrell 1996; Jin 2022). With the help of the more advanced Han, minorities are pushed through stages of development, moving from "primitive" and "semi-feudal" stagnation into socialism with Chinese characteristics. Yet in the development vision articulated in Ningxia, the Hui were treated not as bit players, but as protagonists indispensable to the plot’s development and China's global ambitions.
The Role of Entrepreneurs and Local Officials in Crafting the World Muslim City
Despite backing from Beijing leadership, the World Muslim City was in many ways a local venture spearheaded by local entrepreneurs and municipal and county officials. The former included Yu Zhiyi, a Yinchuan businessman and informal diplomat with extensive connections in the Middle East (Cao 2009). For a time, Yu served as head of the World Muslim City's parent company and held a substantial stake. A Ningxia native with an MBA from Renmin University of China, Yu was the founder and principal of the Ningxia Muslim International Language School, a private vocational school that served as one of the World Muslim City's initial subprojects (Liu, Wang, and Tang 2011: 92). He served on the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region's Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, representing the education sector. In 2016, he used his position on that advisory body to advocate for increased government funding for Arabic-language education.
Yu also co-founded and led the Ningxia Muslim Welfare Association, a charity that played an outsized role as the World Muslim City got off the ground. Established in 2001 and overseen by the Ningxia Ethnic Affairs Commission, the association channeled tens of millions of RMB in foreign Muslim aid funds toward humanitarian causes in Ningxia over some 15 years. In 2007, it helped broker a 2 million RMB donation from Kuwait's House of Zakat and the International Islamic Charitable Organization's Asian Muslim Committee to establish the Ningxia Muslim Orphanage (Wu 2012). Thanks to the association's efforts, both the orphanage and Yu's vocational school were folded into the planning for World Muslim City 1.0. As a result, these entities secured millions of dollars in additional donations from foreign Muslim aid organizations, both state-backed and private.
The roles played by Yu Zhiyi and the Ningxia Muslim Welfare Association highlight the philanthropic and diplomatic dimensions of the World Muslim City in its early stages. Philanthropy served as an important vehicle for wealthier Muslim and Arab nations to build relations with the PRC. Due to its massive Muslim population and status as a Hui autonomous region, Ningxia has long been the focal point of this philanthropic diplomacy, as well as a stage for the PRC to project goodwill toward Muslims and tolerance for Islam. Operating under the watchful eyes of the Ningxia Foreign Affairs Office and the Ethnic Affairs Commission, the Ningxia Muslim Welfare Association helped coordinate these efforts (Liu, Wang, and Tang 2011: 105–6). It leveraged Yu's extensive Middle Eastern connections to identify Hui communities in Ningxia in need of help, distributing funds from foreign Muslim organizations to support community projects: installing water wells, renovating dilapidated homes, building mosques, and so on. The association also facilitated informal meetings between Ningxia officials and visiting Muslim dignitaries, often with Yu serving as host and translator. It was through these diplomatic and philanthropic interactions that planning for the World Muslim City began to take shape (ibid.: 101–3).
Local Communist Party officials also pushed the World Muslim City forward. Xia Xiyun, the Han county party secretary of Yong宁 [Yongning] when the World Muslim City was launched, published an article in *The Communist Party Member* magazine (2009) detailing the county's plans to "build a famous Hui cultural tourism city" (quoted in Jiang 2013: 50–51). In an interview, Xia predicted the World Muslim City would "establish [Yongning] as a Muslim brand," "realize a leap forward in the Hui cultural industry," and transform the county into a "tourist destination for Muslims from around the world" (Wang et al. 2009: 2). Xia was promoted in 2010 to party secretary of Yinchuan's Jinfeng District, home to the Yuehaiwan Central Business District. In that role, Xia oversaw the committee tasked with building the China-Arab axis (Miu 2018).
Realizing the vision of the World Muslim City depended not just on party backing, but on state support—government officials and bureaucracies at municipal, county, and township levels. Subprojects required various permits and approvals from land resources, finance, construction, and housing and urban-rural development departments. This was especially true for subprojects slated for rural land, which under Chinese law is owned by rural collectives (i.e., villages). State approval was necessary both to transfer land-use rights to entities outside the collective and to convert agricultural land to non-agricultural uses like tourism and industry. In Yongning, local officials were also responsible for providing compensation and relocation assistance to rural villagers who were induced to give up their homes and land to support World Muslim City projects (Jiang 2013; Zhang 2014b).
Even with hefty backing from powerful Ningxia officials, World Muslim City Phase 1 ran into roadblocks pretty much right out of the gate. Out of an estimated 800 million RMB budget, only a fraction came from foreign Muslim donors; the rest relied on the parent company hustling for financing in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the firm hit delays securing the official national certificates proving their right to develop certain plots in Yongning, meaning they didn't have the collateral needed to lock down loans. By mid-2010, World Muslim City was bleeding cash and struggling to pay suppliers and contractors. At that point, only one of the vocational school buildings had actually been finished (Zhao 2015).
In 2011, World Muslim City got a new lease on life when a majority stake in the parent company was sold off to Beijing-based Sanxian Group—an investment outfit heavily into real estate development and cultural tourism. Sanxian Group was linked to Liu Yimiao (Liu "One-Second"), a charismatic and controversial business guru who founded the Sparta Education Group, a "business wisdom consulting firm" charging up to 300,000 RMB (over $42,000) for its hit training courses (English China News 2011). Once the buyout went through, World Muslim City's budget blew up to a massive 23 billion RMB, and the number of sub-projects jumped from 13 to 23. In August 2012, World Muslim City 2.0 threw a huge grand (re)opening ceremony with over 500 people in attendance, including Wang Zhengwei and other major Ningxia bigwigs (Zou jin Shijie 2014).
Even with the sub-projects multiplying, Sanxian Group insisted they were sticking to World Muslim City's original Muslim-centric vision. At the 2012 ceremony, the company's CEO hyped up their commitment to "showcasing Ningxia's unique Hui Muslim culture and rich ethnic vibes to the world," while building a "demonstration city that harmoniously blends Chinese and Muslim cultures" (ibid.: 2014). Still, the buyout shifted World Muslim City's focus away from charity and education toward real estate and leisure, expanding its footprint from Yongning County straight into downtown Yinchuan's central business district. Sanxian Group rolled out flashy new plans including the China-Arab Axis, the Ningxia International Hall, luxury resort developments, and an "urban sports park." Some unbuilt Phase 1 sub-projects got rolled into Sanxian's master plan, like the "One Thousand and One Nights" theme park and a Silk Road Museum concept. Others got totally scrapped, including the Quran Mosque. Acres of unfinished rural exhibition halls were bulldozed to clear space for high-end housing.
On paper, this eclectic mix of World Muslim City projects was supposed to create some serious synergy. Once built, the sub-projects would act as cultural and entertainment perks to pitch financial and industrial projects to Middle Eastern investors. High-rollers from Kuwait or Dubai could hit up trade expos at the Ningxia International Hall, with Arabic translation assistance provided by grads from the World Muslim City-funded vocational school. Afterward, they could kick back with World Muslim City's leisure lineup—museums, light shows, halal restaurants, golf, and more—before heading back to crash at their villas in Sanxian's Smart Bay resort community in Yongning. Thanks to Ningxia's Hui Muslim cultural and religious resources, these execs could enjoy all these amenities knowing their Islamic spiritual and dietary obligations were fully covered.
The End of World Muslim City
World Muslim City's troubles didn't vanish just because Sanxian Group took over. The sub-projects ran into even more regulatory headaches—some of them totally self-inflicted by Sanxian. The company and local officials tangled the whole venture up in legal messes, getting major projects slapped with stop-work orders. In 2013, after breaking ground on the luxury resort development and neighboring sports park in Yongning, the projects were flagged for violating national land-use laws that ban building standalone villas and converting farmland for non-agricultural use without approval. Investigative reports also exposed that Sanxian had started work on both projects before securing land transfer certificates from the state—a major legal violation that the county's construction, finance, and land-and-resources departments either facilitated or totally turned a blind eye to (Zhang 2014a). The "urban sports park" (Yi 2014), which Sanxian's promo materials painted as a healthy, eco-friendly green space, turned out to be a full 36-hole golf course—a direct violation of a 2004 nationwide ban on building new courses. When reporters asked about it, the head of the county land and resources bureau denied the golf course even existed, claiming the agency had checked out the property and "didn't find a single hole" (Zhang 2014b).
To make matters worse, some of the rural land illegally repurposed for the course and resort was forcibly seized from farmers who were already leasing it. When the farmers fought back, officials signed off on aggressively snatching the leased land and bulldozing their crops and greenhouses. In 2013, China's Ministry of Land and Resources ordered its Yongning bureau to confiscate the golf course property and slap Sanxian Group with a fine of over 17 million RMB. Yet, shortly after, the county bureau (illegally) handed the course property right back to Sanxian, ostensibly so the company could maintain it and keep it from falling apart. Golf course construction kicked back up, though it was eventually shut down again and the property re-confiscated by the state (Zhang 2014b). Other sub-projects met a similar fate. Construction on a government office building in Yongning got frozen after it was discovered that neither Sanxian nor county officials had scored the mandatory planning clearance from the National Development and Reform Commission (required for all new government buildings) (Shengye Construction v. Yongning County 2019). Today, World Muslim City sits mostly abandoned, limping along through endless court battles.
Whether due to its outsized ambitions or in spite of them, the heavy-handed tactics of World Muslim City's backers dragged the sub-projects into endless controversy, leading to suspension and shutdown. Barely any sub-projects were finished, and plenty never even got off the ground. As one observer put it, the root problem was that World Muslim City's "grand blueprint" was completely disconnected from reality, and Sanxian Group's tens of billions of RMB investment was just an "economic bubble" existing purely on paper (Zhao 2015). Still, looking at the big picture, World Muslim City's ultimate fate was sealed by events at the very top—specifically Xi Jinping's policies and pronouncements. In 2018, Ningxia officials cranked up their "Sinicization" efforts, scrubbing so-called "Saudi" and "Arabian" architectural elements from buildings across the entire autonomous region to make the built environment "fit the spirit of Chinese culture and the progress of the times" (Central Committee 2018). Public Muslim projects that had mostly avoided controversy until then suddenly became casualties of the campaign—like the China-Arab Axis. The Hui Culture Park got the Sinicization treatment too: its name was changed to the Ningxia Folk Customs Park in 2018, and in 2020, the domes and minarets capping the park's buildings were torn down (see Fig. 6). Stripped of its main draw—exotic architecture—the park slid into decay and bankruptcy. By 2022, the Ningxia Department of Culture and Tourism officially stripped it of its certification as a "Cultural Industry Demonstration Unit" (Er Shuai Xiong 2022).
World Muslim City wasn't a total wash, though. A few major sub-projects did get finished, including the Ningxia International Hall, though its mesh exterior was later tweaked to look a lot less like a Muslim headscarf. The former China-Arab Axis, now renamed Solidarity Road, is still an avenue lined with fountains, plazas, and Xi Jinping-approved sculptures and pavilions. Sanxian's Ningxia subsidiary held onto a sliver of the golf course, rebranding it as "Happy Base Camp"—a recreational spot for camping, BBQs, and corporate team-building events (Yongning County Radio and Television Station 2021). One partial success story is the vocational school started by Yu Zhiyi. Back in 2014, rebranded as the Ningxia International Language School, it relocated to a more modern, spacious campus in Yinchuan built partially with World Muslim City funds. The following year, the chairman of Kuwait Investment Bank dropped a 22 million RMB donation to set up an Arabic language teacher training center at the school (Wu 2016). By 2023, the school was renamed yet again as the Ningxia Business Vocational School. While it once aspired to be "China's largest talent training base for the Arabic language" (Han 2013), the emphasis on Arabic has dialed back significantly today. Business Arabic is still taught, but otherwise, the curriculum is pretty standard for a vocational high school in the People's Republic of China.
Despite Sinicization at home, partnerships between the PRC and Muslim nation-states have actually ramped up in recent years. Under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative, China and Arab nations have "implemented over 200 major cooperation projects in energy and infrastructure, with the fruits of cooperation benefiting nearly 2 billion people on both sides" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023). China continues hosting a steady rotation of China-Arab summits and conferences. Beyond trade, tech, and energy, culture remains a huge focus of these events. In 2022, the 5th Arab Arts Festival went down in Jingdezhen, a city in eastern Jiangsu province, bringing a touch of "exotic flair" to China's traditional porcelain capital (Yang 2023).
Yet, under Xi Jinping, Ningxia or China's Hui Muslim culture doesn't seem to be up for discussion at these forums and conferences, let alone serving as a focal point for diplomatic or economic mobilization. Instead, it's China's five-thousand-year (or is it six-thousand?) civilization that gets praised for driving international cooperation. As the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs explains, "Chinese and Arabic civilizations each have their own systems and characteristics," and China and the Arab world "actively draw wisdom and nourishment from each other's civilizations" (2023). To showcase China-Arab friendship and a shared commitment to mutual tolerance, the PRC backed a 2022 UN resolution designating March 15 as the "International Day to Combat Islamophobia."
Conclusion
The push and defense for World Muslim City were framed around a national mission to develop China's western regions and forge tighter bonds with the Muslim world. It was fueled by a multicultural state narrative that encouraged Hui identity and traditional economic mobilization. The project also got a push from the fragmented nature of China's massive governance apparatus—a system that for decades allowed for policy improvisation and local-level deviations. Even with a nod from top leaders in Beijing, World Muslim City was largely a local hustle spearheaded by city and county officials alongside private entrepreneurs. This case lays bare how regional development schemes are dreamed up and executed in China, and how official narratives and policies carved out space for people to chase local agendas—or at least used to. It also shows how rolling out official narratives can mask the "real" dirt: greed, hype, and illegal land grabs, which are all too familiar themes in China's relentless chase for growth.
The collapse of World Muslim City highlights the increasingly narrow vision of nation and tradition under Xi Jinping. For ethnic minorities like the Hui, official rhetoric painting China as a bounded, cohesive civilizational entity slaps strict limits on any cultural, religious, or even commercial activities straying from the secular, Han-dominated mainstream. The wiggle room for local policy improvisation has shrunk right along with it. Xi's drive for control involves tightening party discipline and making sure policies are executed in lockstep with Beijing's direct orders. Backing up this agenda is an anti-corruption campaign now in its second decade, which has dragged down tens of thousands of party and government officials. That included World Muslim City supporter Xia Xiyun, the former party secretary of Yongning County. Investigated for corruption in 2015, Xia was booted from the Party, slapped with bribery and other criminal convictions, and is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence (Shen 2017). In 2022, Wang Zhengwei, former deputy secretary of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Party Committee, became the target of a corruption probe (Chin 2022). Back in 2016, Wang had already been stripped of his post as head of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission after just three years on the job, reportedly for advocating halal standardization and other minority Muslim concerns.
These punitive moves highlight a key angle of Sinicization: its targets aren't just religious orgs and brick-and-mortar buildings—they include party and government officials too. The campaign leans heavily on officials expected to faithfully execute directives, proving their absolute loyalty to the CCP and Xi Jinping himself. Breaking down the campaign to rip down church crosses in Zhejiang—an early testing ground for nationwide Sinicization—Cao Nanlai noted that Zhejiang's push "developed in parallel with top-down nationwide party-building campaigns" (2017:35). Cao argued that even if the campaign fell short of "curbing the massive growth of Christianity in China," it totally succeeded in establishing "political discipline and a coercive environment to build secular state morality across society" (ibid.: 45). Through spatial rectifications, "the state successfully reasserted its ideological power and modernist vision in local communities…" He argues that the Zhejiang events show how, under Xi Jinping, "religious work has become an inseparable part of party-building work." The exact same goes for the push to advance the Sinicization of religious and secular spaces all across the PRC. This campaign is just another link in the long chain of China's state-building (and rebuilding) projects—an effort to stack up or restock symbolic power meant to discipline and instill virtue in the regime's cadres.
As we saw with the makeover of the China-Arab Axis, the tactics of Sinicization highlight the CCP's ongoing reliance on spatial cultural governance. Cultural governance usually steers clear of brute force, instead trying to coax consent by wrapping power in culturally resonant packaging. Yet, Sinicization barely hides the regime's coercive muscle. If anything, it broadcasts that power loud and clear, no matter how vague the actual directives are. The campaign proves a corollary to Bourdieu's (1994:12) classic maxim that "the most brutal relations of force are always simultaneously symbolic relations": it shows that symbolic relations can double as tools to wield force, or as a way to show off the capacity to use it. Whether Sinicization actually wins over hearts and minds among targeted groups remains up in the air. But there's no doubt it has whipped up compliance.
Bringing it back to Lefebvre, Sinicization is essentially a "discourse on social space" pushing a ruling ideology—not revolutionary socialism, but Xi Jinping Thought, nationalism, and strict party control. Its spatial practices force Xi Jinping Thought's "representations of space" onto the lived "spaces of representation," from mosques and theme parks down to spots like the China-Arab Axis. The built environment is the medium used to make abstract concepts—Xi's authority, traditional Chinese culture, national rejuvenation—concrete. The spatial practices of Sinicization operate a lot like political rituals: repetitive, stylized, symbolic actions that channel power and reinforce the moral-political order. These sync up with other moves designed to whip officials and the private sector into line, pushing not just ideological orthodoxy, but orthodox behavior—doing things the approved way within China's political machine. Whether Sinicization's architecture, rituals, and spaces are genuinely "Chinese" doesn't matter much. What counts is that the rituals of Sinicization are performed: domes are torn down, rooflines are altered, and the national flag goes up outside the mosque right before Friday Jum'ah prayers. Repeated across sites all over China, these practices project and amplify the regime's power.
Appendix
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11. This view is supported by think-tank and university researchers who organize conferences and publish monographs detailing how Ningxia’s unique cultural, geographic, and economic traits serve China’s diplomatic and development goals (Fang 2017; Zhuo and Jiang 2016).
12. In 2016, leveraging his position within the advisory body, he advocated for increased government funding for Arabic language education.
13. State approval is necessary both for transferring use rights to entities outside the collective and for converting agricultural land to non-agricultural uses, such as tourism and industry.
14. This view is supported by think-tank and university researchers who organize conferences and publish monographs detailing how Ningxia’s unique cultural, geographic, and economic traits serve China’s diplomatic and development goals (Fang 2017; Zhuo and Jiang 2016).
15. Business Arabic remains an area of study, but beyond that, the curriculum is fairly typical of a secondary vocational college in the People's Republic of China.
16. These measures, coinciding with efforts to discipline officials and the private sector, advance not only ideological orthodoxy but also orthodox behavior—that is, the correct way of doing things within the governance of China’s political system.
One of the highest-profile champions of this development strategy was Wang Zhengwei, who served as deputy party secretary and chairman of the government of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region from 2008 to 2013. A Hui himself, Wang was later promoted to head the State Ethnic Affairs Commission in Beijing. In a 2008 interview, Wang explained that when developing Ningxia’s economy, it made sense to promote its "unique advantages," particularly its distinct Hui identity and culture (Wang and Lian 2008). These advantages included Muslim dietary taboos. During his tenure in Ningxia and beyond, Wang heavily pushed for the standardization and internationalization of the region's halal food processing and certification industry.
Official backing for a Muslim-focused development strategy was noteworthy because, as Wai-Yip Ho points out, Ningxia leadership had long been "hesitant to emphasize its Islamic heritage and build ties with the Muslim ummah" (2013: 84). By the 2000s, however, officials were "keen to reemphasize [Ningxia's] Islamic past and rediscover connections with the Muslim world." Leaders had started viewing the relatively assimilated Hui—the Chinese "good Muslims" described by Yuting Wang (2018)—and their identity and culture as soft power assets for China in its engagements with Muslim nations. This view was backed by think tanks and university researchers who organized conferences and published monographs detailing how Ningxia's unique cultural, geographic, and economic traits could serve China's diplomatic and development goals (Fang 2017; Zhuo and Jiang 2016). One of the recurring themes emphasized in these conferences and publications was the transnational hybridity of the Hui. The Hui minority featured in these narratives is invariably modern, if not postmodern—a globalized people adept at navigating two worlds (the Chinese world and the Islamic world) at once.
For proponents of this development strategy, what made the Hui an asset for China's global ambitions was not just their ethnicity or culture, but their indelible Muslim attributes, which embedded them within the global ummah. Cong Enlin, then vice president of the Islamic Association of China, highlighted this in a 2016 article. A Hui himself, Cong asserted that given the massive Muslim populations residing in countries along the Belt and Road, Chinese Muslims were uniquely positioned to help realize Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative. He described the BRI as "not merely a road of trade," but a "road of religious and cultural exchange," and argued that "Muslim talent" should "play an active role" within it (Enlin 2016: 270–71). Government support for the hajj was also essential because it was through the pilgrimage that "friendships between Chinese Muslims and Muslims around the world are strengthened, and friendly government-to-government relations are established" (ibid.: 269). Cong explained that fully tapping into "religious resources" would allow Chinese Muslim citizens to "spread Chinese wisdom, tell China stories well, amplify China's voice, and make China's public diplomacy more vivid and deeply rooted in people's hearts."
Cong's remarks underscore the enduring nature of "communist multiculturalist" narratives and ideals, which for decades have shaped, to varying degrees, China's governance of diverse peoples across its vast lands (McCarthy 2009). The notion of a multi-ethnic Chinese state—the Chinese nation (*Zhonghua minzu*), a harmonious blend of the Han majority and various minorities—first emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to counter Han supremacist arguments underpinning anti-Manchu and anti-Qing nationalism (Jenco 2019; Jin 2022; Leibold 2007; Tam 2023). The multicultural narrative became more prominent during the communist revolution as the CCP courted the support of non-Han peoples living across vast Chinese territories. David Stroup writes that the party's desire to maintain the "vast and diverse... geographical entity of the former Qing empire" led it to "invoke a grander concept of Chineseness, one that implied multiculturalism, harmony, and equality under the party's leadership" (2022: 37).
Following the Maoist era, the regime encouraged ethnic minorities to restore their distinct cultural practices and identities, even as it remained wary of what it deemed separatism and extremism. This encouragement went beyond mere tolerance, as officials actively promoted the revival of minority cultures—either as a legitimation strategy to boost economic development, or because they were minority members themselves. Ethnic cultural revival could and did function as a mode of resistance, for instance by enabling minorities to reshape collective identities and shed the stigma and trauma suffered under Maoist socialism (Litzinger 1998; Mueggler 2001; Makley 2005). For many minority peoples, however, the expression of ethnic and religious differences constituted a declaration of membership in the Chinese state. In other words, "to be a minority [became]... a way of being a national" (McCarthy 2009: 10).
Although Ningxia’s development strategy and the World Muslim City borrowed from this multicultural national narrative, their articulation disrupted its plot and characterization. In the *Bildungsroman* of the Chinese national story—a tale of past glory, humiliation, struggle, and ultimate triumph—the Han are positioned as the primary protagonists. Inclusive though communist multiculturalism is—and it is quite inclusive, creating space within the national imagination for diverse groups—minorities are cast as supporting actors, if not plot devices, on China's journey toward self-realization. A core trope of this narrative is the notion of the Han as the "big brother" nation who rescues minority brothers and sisters from backwardness by providing civilizational and technical knowledge (Harrell 1996; Jin 2022). With the help of the more advanced Han, minorities are pushed through stages of development, moving from "primitive" and "semi-feudal" stagnation into socialism with Chinese characteristics. Yet in the development vision articulated in Ningxia, the Hui were treated not as bit players, but as protagonists indispensable to the plot’s development and China's global ambitions.
The Role of Entrepreneurs and Local Officials in Crafting the World Muslim City
Despite backing from Beijing leadership, the World Muslim City was in many ways a local venture spearheaded by local entrepreneurs and municipal and county officials. The former included Yu Zhiyi, a Yinchuan businessman and informal diplomat with extensive connections in the Middle East (Cao 2009). For a time, Yu served as head of the World Muslim City's parent company and held a substantial stake. A Ningxia native with an MBA from Renmin University of China, Yu was the founder and principal of the Ningxia Muslim International Language School, a private vocational school that served as one of the World Muslim City's initial subprojects (Liu, Wang, and Tang 2011: 92). He served on the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region's Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, representing the education sector. In 2016, he used his position on that advisory body to advocate for increased government funding for Arabic-language education.
Yu also co-founded and led the Ningxia Muslim Welfare Association, a charity that played an outsized role as the World Muslim City got off the ground. Established in 2001 and overseen by the Ningxia Ethnic Affairs Commission, the association channeled tens of millions of RMB in foreign Muslim aid funds toward humanitarian causes in Ningxia over some 15 years. In 2007, it helped broker a 2 million RMB donation from Kuwait's House of Zakat and the International Islamic Charitable Organization's Asian Muslim Committee to establish the Ningxia Muslim Orphanage (Wu 2012). Thanks to the association's efforts, both the orphanage and Yu's vocational school were folded into the planning for World Muslim City 1.0. As a result, these entities secured millions of dollars in additional donations from foreign Muslim aid organizations, both state-backed and private.
The roles played by Yu Zhiyi and the Ningxia Muslim Welfare Association highlight the philanthropic and diplomatic dimensions of the World Muslim City in its early stages. Philanthropy served as an important vehicle for wealthier Muslim and Arab nations to build relations with the PRC. Due to its massive Muslim population and status as a Hui autonomous region, Ningxia has long been the focal point of this philanthropic diplomacy, as well as a stage for the PRC to project goodwill toward Muslims and tolerance for Islam. Operating under the watchful eyes of the Ningxia Foreign Affairs Office and the Ethnic Affairs Commission, the Ningxia Muslim Welfare Association helped coordinate these efforts (Liu, Wang, and Tang 2011: 105–6). It leveraged Yu's extensive Middle Eastern connections to identify Hui communities in Ningxia in need of help, distributing funds from foreign Muslim organizations to support community projects: installing water wells, renovating dilapidated homes, building mosques, and so on. The association also facilitated informal meetings between Ningxia officials and visiting Muslim dignitaries, often with Yu serving as host and translator. It was through these diplomatic and philanthropic interactions that planning for the World Muslim City began to take shape (ibid.: 101–3).
Local Communist Party officials also pushed the World Muslim City forward. Xia Xiyun, the Han county party secretary of Yong宁 [Yongning] when the World Muslim City was launched, published an article in *The Communist Party Member* magazine (2009) detailing the county's plans to "build a famous Hui cultural tourism city" (quoted in Jiang 2013: 50–51). In an interview, Xia predicted the World Muslim City would "establish [Yongning] as a Muslim brand," "realize a leap forward in the Hui cultural industry," and transform the county into a "tourist destination for Muslims from around the world" (Wang et al. 2009: 2). Xia was promoted in 2010 to party secretary of Yinchuan's Jinfeng District, home to the Yuehaiwan Central Business District. In that role, Xia oversaw the committee tasked with building the China-Arab axis (Miu 2018).
Realizing the vision of the World Muslim City depended not just on party backing, but on state support—government officials and bureaucracies at municipal, county, and township levels. Subprojects required various permits and approvals from land resources, finance, construction, and housing and urban-rural development departments. This was especially true for subprojects slated for rural land, which under Chinese law is owned by rural collectives (i.e., villages). State approval was necessary both to transfer land-use rights to entities outside the collective and to convert agricultural land to non-agricultural uses like tourism and industry. In Yongning, local officials were also responsible for providing compensation and relocation assistance to rural villagers who were induced to give up their homes and land to support World Muslim City projects (Jiang 2013; Zhang 2014b).
Even with hefty backing from powerful Ningxia officials, World Muslim City Phase 1 ran into roadblocks pretty much right out of the gate. Out of an estimated 800 million RMB budget, only a fraction came from foreign Muslim donors; the rest relied on the parent company hustling for financing in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the firm hit delays securing the official national certificates proving their right to develop certain plots in Yongning, meaning they didn't have the collateral needed to lock down loans. By mid-2010, World Muslim City was bleeding cash and struggling to pay suppliers and contractors. At that point, only one of the vocational school buildings had actually been finished (Zhao 2015).
In 2011, World Muslim City got a new lease on life when a majority stake in the parent company was sold off to Beijing-based Sanxian Group—an investment outfit heavily into real estate development and cultural tourism. Sanxian Group was linked to Liu Yimiao (Liu "One-Second"), a charismatic and controversial business guru who founded the Sparta Education Group, a "business wisdom consulting firm" charging up to 300,000 RMB (over $42,000) for its hit training courses (English China News 2011). Once the buyout went through, World Muslim City's budget blew up to a massive 23 billion RMB, and the number of sub-projects jumped from 13 to 23. In August 2012, World Muslim City 2.0 threw a huge grand (re)opening ceremony with over 500 people in attendance, including Wang Zhengwei and other major Ningxia bigwigs (Zou jin Shijie 2014).
Even with the sub-projects multiplying, Sanxian Group insisted they were sticking to World Muslim City's original Muslim-centric vision. At the 2012 ceremony, the company's CEO hyped up their commitment to "showcasing Ningxia's unique Hui Muslim culture and rich ethnic vibes to the world," while building a "demonstration city that harmoniously blends Chinese and Muslim cultures" (ibid.: 2014). Still, the buyout shifted World Muslim City's focus away from charity and education toward real estate and leisure, expanding its footprint from Yongning County straight into downtown Yinchuan's central business district. Sanxian Group rolled out flashy new plans including the China-Arab Axis, the Ningxia International Hall, luxury resort developments, and an "urban sports park." Some unbuilt Phase 1 sub-projects got rolled into Sanxian's master plan, like the "One Thousand and One Nights" theme park and a Silk Road Museum concept. Others got totally scrapped, including the Quran Mosque. Acres of unfinished rural exhibition halls were bulldozed to clear space for high-end housing.
On paper, this eclectic mix of World Muslim City projects was supposed to create some serious synergy. Once built, the sub-projects would act as cultural and entertainment perks to pitch financial and industrial projects to Middle Eastern investors. High-rollers from Kuwait or Dubai could hit up trade expos at the Ningxia International Hall, with Arabic translation assistance provided by grads from the World Muslim City-funded vocational school. Afterward, they could kick back with World Muslim City's leisure lineup—museums, light shows, halal restaurants, golf, and more—before heading back to crash at their villas in Sanxian's Smart Bay resort community in Yongning. Thanks to Ningxia's Hui Muslim cultural and religious resources, these execs could enjoy all these amenities knowing their Islamic spiritual and dietary obligations were fully covered.
The End of World Muslim City
World Muslim City's troubles didn't vanish just because Sanxian Group took over. The sub-projects ran into even more regulatory headaches—some of them totally self-inflicted by Sanxian. The company and local officials tangled the whole venture up in legal messes, getting major projects slapped with stop-work orders. In 2013, after breaking ground on the luxury resort development and neighboring sports park in Yongning, the projects were flagged for violating national land-use laws that ban building standalone villas and converting farmland for non-agricultural use without approval. Investigative reports also exposed that Sanxian had started work on both projects before securing land transfer certificates from the state—a major legal violation that the county's construction, finance, and land-and-resources departments either facilitated or totally turned a blind eye to (Zhang 2014a). The "urban sports park" (Yi 2014), which Sanxian's promo materials painted as a healthy, eco-friendly green space, turned out to be a full 36-hole golf course—a direct violation of a 2004 nationwide ban on building new courses. When reporters asked about it, the head of the county land and resources bureau denied the golf course even existed, claiming the agency had checked out the property and "didn't find a single hole" (Zhang 2014b).
To make matters worse, some of the rural land illegally repurposed for the course and resort was forcibly seized from farmers who were already leasing it. When the farmers fought back, officials signed off on aggressively snatching the leased land and bulldozing their crops and greenhouses. In 2013, China's Ministry of Land and Resources ordered its Yongning bureau to confiscate the golf course property and slap Sanxian Group with a fine of over 17 million RMB. Yet, shortly after, the county bureau (illegally) handed the course property right back to Sanxian, ostensibly so the company could maintain it and keep it from falling apart. Golf course construction kicked back up, though it was eventually shut down again and the property re-confiscated by the state (Zhang 2014b). Other sub-projects met a similar fate. Construction on a government office building in Yongning got frozen after it was discovered that neither Sanxian nor county officials had scored the mandatory planning clearance from the National Development and Reform Commission (required for all new government buildings) (Shengye Construction v. Yongning County 2019). Today, World Muslim City sits mostly abandoned, limping along through endless court battles.
Whether due to its outsized ambitions or in spite of them, the heavy-handed tactics of World Muslim City's backers dragged the sub-projects into endless controversy, leading to suspension and shutdown. Barely any sub-projects were finished, and plenty never even got off the ground. As one observer put it, the root problem was that World Muslim City's "grand blueprint" was completely disconnected from reality, and Sanxian Group's tens of billions of RMB investment was just an "economic bubble" existing purely on paper (Zhao 2015). Still, looking at the big picture, World Muslim City's ultimate fate was sealed by events at the very top—specifically Xi Jinping's policies and pronouncements. In 2018, Ningxia officials cranked up their "Sinicization" efforts, scrubbing so-called "Saudi" and "Arabian" architectural elements from buildings across the entire autonomous region to make the built environment "fit the spirit of Chinese culture and the progress of the times" (Central Committee 2018). Public Muslim projects that had mostly avoided controversy until then suddenly became casualties of the campaign—like the China-Arab Axis. The Hui Culture Park got the Sinicization treatment too: its name was changed to the Ningxia Folk Customs Park in 2018, and in 2020, the domes and minarets capping the park's buildings were torn down (see Fig. 6). Stripped of its main draw—exotic architecture—the park slid into decay and bankruptcy. By 2022, the Ningxia Department of Culture and Tourism officially stripped it of its certification as a "Cultural Industry Demonstration Unit" (Er Shuai Xiong 2022).
World Muslim City wasn't a total wash, though. A few major sub-projects did get finished, including the Ningxia International Hall, though its mesh exterior was later tweaked to look a lot less like a Muslim headscarf. The former China-Arab Axis, now renamed Solidarity Road, is still an avenue lined with fountains, plazas, and Xi Jinping-approved sculptures and pavilions. Sanxian's Ningxia subsidiary held onto a sliver of the golf course, rebranding it as "Happy Base Camp"—a recreational spot for camping, BBQs, and corporate team-building events (Yongning County Radio and Television Station 2021). One partial success story is the vocational school started by Yu Zhiyi. Back in 2014, rebranded as the Ningxia International Language School, it relocated to a more modern, spacious campus in Yinchuan built partially with World Muslim City funds. The following year, the chairman of Kuwait Investment Bank dropped a 22 million RMB donation to set up an Arabic language teacher training center at the school (Wu 2016). By 2023, the school was renamed yet again as the Ningxia Business Vocational School. While it once aspired to be "China's largest talent training base for the Arabic language" (Han 2013), the emphasis on Arabic has dialed back significantly today. Business Arabic is still taught, but otherwise, the curriculum is pretty standard for a vocational high school in the People's Republic of China.
Despite Sinicization at home, partnerships between the PRC and Muslim nation-states have actually ramped up in recent years. Under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative, China and Arab nations have "implemented over 200 major cooperation projects in energy and infrastructure, with the fruits of cooperation benefiting nearly 2 billion people on both sides" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023). China continues hosting a steady rotation of China-Arab summits and conferences. Beyond trade, tech, and energy, culture remains a huge focus of these events. In 2022, the 5th Arab Arts Festival went down in Jingdezhen, a city in eastern Jiangsu province, bringing a touch of "exotic flair" to China's traditional porcelain capital (Yang 2023).
Yet, under Xi Jinping, Ningxia or China's Hui Muslim culture doesn't seem to be up for discussion at these forums and conferences, let alone serving as a focal point for diplomatic or economic mobilization. Instead, it's China's five-thousand-year (or is it six-thousand?) civilization that gets praised for driving international cooperation. As the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs explains, "Chinese and Arabic civilizations each have their own systems and characteristics," and China and the Arab world "actively draw wisdom and nourishment from each other's civilizations" (2023). To showcase China-Arab friendship and a shared commitment to mutual tolerance, the PRC backed a 2022 UN resolution designating March 15 as the "International Day to Combat Islamophobia."
Conclusion
The push and defense for World Muslim City were framed around a national mission to develop China's western regions and forge tighter bonds with the Muslim world. It was fueled by a multicultural state narrative that encouraged Hui identity and traditional economic mobilization. The project also got a push from the fragmented nature of China's massive governance apparatus—a system that for decades allowed for policy improvisation and local-level deviations. Even with a nod from top leaders in Beijing, World Muslim City was largely a local hustle spearheaded by city and county officials alongside private entrepreneurs. This case lays bare how regional development schemes are dreamed up and executed in China, and how official narratives and policies carved out space for people to chase local agendas—or at least used to. It also shows how rolling out official narratives can mask the "real" dirt: greed, hype, and illegal land grabs, which are all too familiar themes in China's relentless chase for growth.
The collapse of World Muslim City highlights the increasingly narrow vision of nation and tradition under Xi Jinping. For ethnic minorities like the Hui, official rhetoric painting China as a bounded, cohesive civilizational entity slaps strict limits on any cultural, religious, or even commercial activities straying from the secular, Han-dominated mainstream. The wiggle room for local policy improvisation has shrunk right along with it. Xi's drive for control involves tightening party discipline and making sure policies are executed in lockstep with Beijing's direct orders. Backing up this agenda is an anti-corruption campaign now in its second decade, which has dragged down tens of thousands of party and government officials. That included World Muslim City supporter Xia Xiyun, the former party secretary of Yongning County. Investigated for corruption in 2015, Xia was booted from the Party, slapped with bribery and other criminal convictions, and is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence (Shen 2017). In 2022, Wang Zhengwei, former deputy secretary of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Party Committee, became the target of a corruption probe (Chin 2022). Back in 2016, Wang had already been stripped of his post as head of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission after just three years on the job, reportedly for advocating halal standardization and other minority Muslim concerns.
These punitive moves highlight a key angle of Sinicization: its targets aren't just religious orgs and brick-and-mortar buildings—they include party and government officials too. The campaign leans heavily on officials expected to faithfully execute directives, proving their absolute loyalty to the CCP and Xi Jinping himself. Breaking down the campaign to rip down church crosses in Zhejiang—an early testing ground for nationwide Sinicization—Cao Nanlai noted that Zhejiang's push "developed in parallel with top-down nationwide party-building campaigns" (2017:35). Cao argued that even if the campaign fell short of "curbing the massive growth of Christianity in China," it totally succeeded in establishing "political discipline and a coercive environment to build secular state morality across society" (ibid.: 45). Through spatial rectifications, "the state successfully reasserted its ideological power and modernist vision in local communities…" He argues that the Zhejiang events show how, under Xi Jinping, "religious work has become an inseparable part of party-building work." The exact same goes for the push to advance the Sinicization of religious and secular spaces all across the PRC. This campaign is just another link in the long chain of China's state-building (and rebuilding) projects—an effort to stack up or restock symbolic power meant to discipline and instill virtue in the regime's cadres.
As we saw with the makeover of the China-Arab Axis, the tactics of Sinicization highlight the CCP's ongoing reliance on spatial cultural governance. Cultural governance usually steers clear of brute force, instead trying to coax consent by wrapping power in culturally resonant packaging. Yet, Sinicization barely hides the regime's coercive muscle. If anything, it broadcasts that power loud and clear, no matter how vague the actual directives are. The campaign proves a corollary to Bourdieu's (1994:12) classic maxim that "the most brutal relations of force are always simultaneously symbolic relations": it shows that symbolic relations can double as tools to wield force, or as a way to show off the capacity to use it. Whether Sinicization actually wins over hearts and minds among targeted groups remains up in the air. But there's no doubt it has whipped up compliance.
Bringing it back to Lefebvre, Sinicization is essentially a "discourse on social space" pushing a ruling ideology—not revolutionary socialism, but Xi Jinping Thought, nationalism, and strict party control. Its spatial practices force Xi Jinping Thought's "representations of space" onto the lived "spaces of representation," from mosques and theme parks down to spots like the China-Arab Axis. The built environment is the medium used to make abstract concepts—Xi's authority, traditional Chinese culture, national rejuvenation—concrete. The spatial practices of Sinicization operate a lot like political rituals: repetitive, stylized, symbolic actions that channel power and reinforce the moral-political order. These sync up with other moves designed to whip officials and the private sector into line, pushing not just ideological orthodoxy, but orthodox behavior—doing things the approved way within China's political machine. Whether Sinicization's architecture, rituals, and spaces are genuinely "Chinese" doesn't matter much. What counts is that the rituals of Sinicization are performed: domes are torn down, rooflines are altered, and the national flag goes up outside the mosque right before Friday Jum'ah prayers. Repeated across sites all over China, these practices project and amplify the regime's power.
Appendix
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11. This view is supported by think-tank and university researchers who organize conferences and publish monographs detailing how Ningxia’s unique cultural, geographic, and economic traits serve China’s diplomatic and development goals (Fang 2017; Zhuo and Jiang 2016).
12. In 2016, leveraging his position within the advisory body, he advocated for increased government funding for Arabic language education.
13. State approval is necessary both for transferring use rights to entities outside the collective and for converting agricultural land to non-agricultural uses, such as tourism and industry.
14. This view is supported by think-tank and university researchers who organize conferences and publish monographs detailing how Ningxia’s unique cultural, geographic, and economic traits serve China’s diplomatic and development goals (Fang 2017; Zhuo and Jiang 2016).
15. Business Arabic remains an area of study, but beyond that, the curriculum is fairly typical of a secondary vocational college in the People's Republic of China.
16. These measures, coinciding with efforts to discipline officials and the private sector, advance not only ideological orthodoxy but also orthodox behavior—that is, the correct way of doing things within the governance of China’s political system.
