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北京现在对回族使用的手段，最早是针对居住在西北地区新疆的维吾尔族和其他突厥穆斯林少数民族。过去十年来，该地区前所未有的安全化导致了高科技监控国家的发展，几乎监控了穆斯林行为的方方面面。泄露的警方档案显示，人们因斋月期间禁食、戴头巾或诵读《古兰经》而被集体监禁。北京声称，这些被称为“人民反恐战争”的措施在打击恐怖主义和将新疆与中国其他地区融合方面是有效的。

玉溪的通告表明，中国对待“模范穆斯林少数民族”的态度正日益转向新疆。报告显示，新疆各地每隔几百英尺就设立一个所谓的“便民警务站”，以监控当地居民的行为，而这种做法正蔓延到甘肃和青海等邻近省份。与此同时，另一个回族重镇宁夏的党员干部也前往该地区接受“反恐培训”。

不久前，2015 年斋月期间，新疆发生了臭名昭著的“西瓜事件”。当时，医科大学的教授们在穆斯林斋戒期间中午向学生分发西瓜片。据报道，拒绝分发西瓜的学生被威胁要吊销毕业证书。这一事件在土耳其引发了暴力抗议，给北京带来了巨大的外交压力，新疆党委书记张春贤与当地穆斯林代表一起开斋，庆祝斋月最后一天，这是现代新疆历史上第一次开斋。

正如全球的强烈抗议一样，该地区的反应也是史无前例的，但当回民听到与西瓜事件类似的事件时，他们记得，这只是对维吾尔族加强监控制度的先兆，而监控制度很快就演变成一场全面的胁迫和同化运动。

尽管北京声称维护宪法赋予的宗教信仰自由，但在中国，有组织的宗教受到严格限制。伊斯兰教受到特别严厉的对待：新疆禁止举行穆斯林葬礼，而中国各地则邀请道士为死者举行体面的告别仪式并获得报酬。汉族父母和孩子涌入佛教和孔庙祈求大学入学考试成功，但回族未成年人被禁止学习宗教。例如，2016 年，甘肃省的幼儿园被禁止教授伊斯兰教，因为网上流传了一名幼儿园女孩背诵《古兰经》的视频。当局表示，这种做法违反了“宗教与教育分离的原则”。河南、宁夏和云南的回族儿童托管中心和宗教学校也被以同样的理由关闭。

回族儿童只是官方为使少数民族儿童脱离其父母的信仰和文化而采取的最新措施的目标之一。中国内蒙古自治区的青少年被禁止学习本族语言和历史，而西藏的儿童则被与家人分离，被送往远离家乡的寄宿学校学习普通话。由于父母在新疆被大规模监禁和拘禁而成为“孤儿”的维吾尔族儿童被送往学校或所谓的福利中心，目的是灌输什么是中国人。

西瓜事件发生时，我正在沙甸进行民族志田野调查。沙甸是一个规模虽小但很富裕的回族聚居地，距离玉溪 90 英里。1975 年 7 月，1600 多名回族居民因抵制前中国领导人毛泽东在文化大革命期间的反传统政策而遭到屠杀。我在那里的时候，对儿童的彻底监控尚未实施，但以“宗教与教育分离”为名对学校伊斯兰教的监管已经开始。例如，县教育局禁止学校在斋月期间缩短午休时间，并允许提前放学，以免斋戒的师生在烈日下多呆一段时间。

地方政府公务员也被禁止戴头巾。戴头巾的回族教师必须提交不戴头巾的新照片，过去戴头巾的师生毕业照也被从学校走廊的墙上移除。

这些措施是在 2014 年 3 月云南省会昆明发生持刀伤人事件后出台的。当时，国家政府声称袭击者是维吾尔分裂分子，并将其定性为恐怖事件。当得知袭击者在沙甸准备袭击时，该州政府发誓要“让宗教回到合法轨道上”。老师和家长都向我抱怨，戴头巾的限制与法律没有任何关系，因此本质上是仇视伊斯兰教的。

2018 年，习近平将国家宗教局并入统战部，这是毛泽东设立的专门处理中共正式圈子外实体和社区的机构。宗教从行政问题转变为意识形态问题，导致地方干部与宗教团体之间的相互包容关系恶化。

此后不久，中国伊斯兰教协会（中共全国穆斯林事务的监督机构）公布了“坚持伊斯兰教中国化”五年政策规划。中国基督教和天主教社区的监督机构也发布了类似的规划。虽然它们都强调爱国主义教育的必要性，但只有伊斯兰教协会的规划提到要实行宗教与教育分离，这是爱国主义的先决条件。

该计划还将禁止戴头巾的禁令扩大到学童，实际上使得学校里任何提到伊斯兰教的内容都具有重大影响。“学生们通常会写关于家乡的文章，描述家乡有一座美丽的清真寺、优美的祈祷声和欢乐的斋月，”一位当地的回族汉语老师告诉我。“但这些描述现在很成问题。‘清真寺’这个词本身就很敏感。相反，我们现在要求他们写政府如何组织许多有趣的活动，生活如何变得更好，街道如何变得更宽阔。总之，现在的文章必须传达爱国主义精神。”

我曾经在沙甸采访过许多回民，对他们来说，将宗教与教育分开的原则听起来就像是党想让回民青年脱离父母的宗教信仰的简写。他们哀叹道：“我们的孩子是中国公民，因为我们是他们的父母，但现在却不被允许教他们我们的信仰。”

如今，在沙迪安，对儿童中伊斯兰教的管制已变得无处不在。儿童被禁止参加宗教静修和活动，宗教学校也不再被允许组织这些活动。汉族教师被带到宗教学校，以此将伊斯兰课程世俗化，学生和老师都告诉我，这让宗教学校受到了严密的监控。

这种通过监控进行中国化的形式，是习近平思想和政策中特别注重灌输的结果。2018 年，习近平主持召开全国教育工作会议，他敦促教师优先在全国青少年中培养对党的认同感。

他说： “如果第一颗扣子扣错了，剩下的扣子就都扣错了。做人要从头扣好。” 2014 年 9 月，习近平在视察北京师范大学时开始使用这个比喻，当时他正在那里看望师范生。

一周后，时任新疆维吾尔族自治区党委书记张春贤将这场史无前例的针对维吾尔族人的“去极端化”和再教育运动称为“扣上第一颗扣子”。

这项活动实施十年来，因使用国有安防公司海康威视生产的令人毛骨悚然的人脸识别设备而闻名。最近的报道表明，这种技术现在正在中国其他地区的学校中推广。

例如，2022 年 7 月，海康威视成功中标福建省闽江学院智慧校园项目，项目标金额达数百万美元。招标内容包括开发一种名为“少数民族学生辅助分析”的系统，该系统可以追踪“就餐记录”，并在学生“涉嫌在斋月期间禁食”时向大学管理部门发出警报。

一所公立大学要求安装此类软件，这一事实本身就是一个不祥之兆，预示着中国穆斯林青年一旦逃离学校和家乡的监视，将面临什么样的命运。就像新疆的维吾尔族人一样，他们可以断绝与信仰的联系，但可能永远无法完全融入中国社会的主流。他们对党的忠诚将永远受到怀疑——他们的血统是他们继续被疏远和压制的理由。

The techniques being used now on the Hui were first honed by Beijing on Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities inhabiting the northwestern region of Xinjiang. Unprecedented securitization of the region over the past decade has led to the development of a high-tech surveillance state that monitors virtually every aspect of Muslim behavior. Leaked police files show people being incarcerated en masse for fasting during Ramadan, wearing a headscarf, or reciting the Quran. Beijing claims that the measures—dubbed “the People’s War on Terror”—are effective in combating terrorism and integrating Xinjiang with the rest of China.

The notice in Yuxi suggests that China’s treatment of its “model Muslim minority” is increasingly taking a Xinjiang turn. Reports show that so-called “convenient police stations,” installed throughout Xinjiang every few hundred feet from each other to monitor behavior, are spreading to neighboring provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. Meanwhile, party cadres from the province of Ningxia—another Hui stronghold—are traveling to the region to receive “anti-terrorism training.”

Not long ago, in Xinjiang during Ramadan of 2015, the infamous “watermelon incident” occurred, in which professors at the University of Medicine handed out watermelon slices to students in the middle of the day, when practicing Muslims fast. Those who refused the watermelon were reportedly threatened with the denial of their diplomas. The revelation led to violent protests in Turkey, putting so much diplomatic pressure on Beijing that the Xinjiang party chief Zhang Chunxian joined local Muslim representatives for an iftar to celebrate the last day of Ramadan, the first such occasion in the history of modern Xinjiang.

The regional response was as unprecedented as the global outcry, but when the Hui hear stories of events that echo the watermelon incident, they remember that it was a forerunner to an intensified surveillance regime among Uyghurs that soon became a full-scale campaign of coercion and assimilation.

Organized religion is highly restricted in China despite Beijing claiming to uphold the freedom of religious belief enshrined in the constitution. Islam is treated with particular harshness: Conducting Muslim funerals is restricted in Xinjiang, while Daoist priests are invited and get paid to give proper farewells to the deceased throughout China. Han parents and kids flood Buddhist and Confucian temples to pray for success in university entrance exams, but Hui minors are barred from studying religion. In 2016, for instance, nursery schools in the Gansu province were prohibited from teaching Islam after a video of a kindergarten girl reciting the Quran spread online. Authorities said the practice violates the “principle of separation between religion and education.” The same reason was cited to shut down the Hui-run child care centers and religious schools in Henan, Ningxia, and Yunnan.

The Hui children are just the latest target of official efforts to separate minority kids from the faith and culture of their parents. Youth in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous region are restricted from learning their language and history, while children in Tibet are being separated from their families and sent to boarding schools far from their homes to learn Mandarin. The Uyghur children “orphaned” by the mass incarceration and internment of their parents in Xinjiang are sent to schools or so-called welfare centers aimed at indoctrination into what it means to be Chinese.

At the time of the watermelon incident, I was doing ethnographic fieldwork in Shadian, a small but affluent Hui community located 90 miles from Yuxi where more than 1,600 Hui residents were massacred in July 1975 for resisting former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s iconoclastic policies during the Cultural Revolution. When I was there, outright surveillance of children wasn’t implemented yet, but the policing of Islam in schools in the name of “separation between religion and education” was already underway. For example, the prefectural Bureau of Education restricted schools from shortening lunchtime breaks during Ramadan and offering earlier release time to spare the fasting teachers and students from additional time under the sun’s heat.

Civil servants working in the local administration were also forbidden from wearing headscarves. Veiled Hui teachers had to submit new profile photos without headscarves, and past graduation photos that featured veiled teachers and students were removed from the walls of school corridors.

These measures were introduced following a March 2014 knife attack that happened in Yunnan’s provincial capital of Kunming. The national government claimed that the assailants were Uyghur separatists and classified it as a terrorist incident. When it became known that the assailants prepared for their attack in Shadian, the prefectural government vowed to “bring religion back onto the legal track.” Both teachers and parents complained to me that veiling restrictions lacked any reference to the law and were thus fundamentally Islamophobic.

In 2018, Xi absorbed the State Administration of Religious Affairs into the United Front Work Department, an organ created by Mao to deal specifically with entities and communities outside of the formal CCP circle. Religion shifted from being an administrative question to an ideological one, causing mutually accommodative relationships between local cadres and religious groups to deteriorate.

Shortly after that, the Chinese Islamic Association, the party’s supervisory organ of Muslim affairs in the country, publicized a five-year policy plan on “Persisting in the Sinification of Islam.” Similar plans were issued by supervisory organs for China’s Protestant and Catholic communities. While all stress the need for patriotic education, only the plan by the Islamic Association mentions the enforcement of separation between religion and education as a precondition for patriotism.

The plan, which also extended the ban on veiling to schoolchildren, functionally rendered any mention of Islam in schools consequential. “It was typical for students to write essays about their hometown, describing it as a place of a beautiful mosque, melodic call to prayer, and festive Ramadan,” one local Hui Chinese language teacher told me. “But these descriptions are very problematic now. The word ‘mosque’ alone is very sensitive. Instead, we now ask them to write about how the government organizes many interesting activities, how life becomes better, and how streets become wider. All in all, the essays must convey the spirit of patriotism now.”

For many Hui that I spoke with in Shadian at a time, the principle of separating religion and education sounded like a shorthand for the party’s desire to separate young Hui from the religion of their parents. “Our kids are citizens of China because we are their parents,” they lamented, “but we are not allowed to teach them our ways now.”

In Shadian today, the policing of Islam among children is becoming pervasive. Children are restricted from participating in religious retreats and activities, and madrasas are no longer allowed to organize them. Han teachers are being brought to madrasas as a way to secularize the Islamic curriculum, which both students and teachers told me places madrasas under careful watch.

This form of Sinicization through surveillance is shaped by Xi’s particular focus on indoctrination in his thought and policy. In 2018, Xi chaired the national conference on education, where he urged teachers to prioritize identification with the party among the national youth.

“If the first button is wrongly buttoned,” he said, “all the remaining buttons will be wrongly buttoned. Life must be buttoned up right from the beginning.” Xi began using this metaphor in September 2014 during his visit to Beijing Normal University, where he met with students training to be teachers.

A week later, then-Xinjiang party chief Zhang Chunxian justified the unprecedented “de-extremification” and reeducation campaign among Uyghurs as “buttoning the first button.”

A decade into its implementation, the campaign is known for its use of macabre face recognition equipment manufactured by the state-owned security company Hikvision. Recent reports suggest that such technology is now being introduced to schools in the rest of China.

In July 2022, for example, Hikvision successfully won a multimillion tender for the Smart Campus project at Minjiang University, located in the coastal province of Fujian. The tender included the development of a system called “Assisted Analysis of Ethnic Minority Students” which allows for the tracking of “dining records” and sending alerts to university administration when students are “suspected of fasting during the month of Ramadan.”

The very fact that such software was demanded by a public university is an ominous sign of what awaits China’s ethnically Muslim youth once they escape surveillance in their schools and hometowns. Like Uyghurs in Xinjiang, they can sever their connection with their faith, but they may never be able to assimilate fully to the dominant part of Chinese society. Their loyalty to the party will always be suspect—and their heritage a justification for their continued alienation and subjugation.

消息来源：外交杂志 Ruslan Yusupov

Ruslan Yusupov is a postdoctoral fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University. A sociocultural anthropologist by training, he studies ethnic and religious politics in contemporary China.