Understanding the ‘China Story’ of Islam: Imagining prosperity through the prism of the Party-Empire-State

To understand the rationale and mechanism of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) political initiative Sinicization of Islam, this article traces the interconnected imaginaries between the Party-led political project and the call for religious subservience and ultimately cultural homogeneity through a historical and discourse analysis of the China Story. In this article, the CCP regime is understood as Party-Empire-State, showing its nature as both Party-Empire and Party-State, in the process of the Sinicization of Islam. The Party-Empire nature provides the CCP with a policy template and the claimed historical legitimacy to enact Sinicization. The Party-State nature allows the CCP to subjugate Islam religiously and nationally to the state’s power and the CCP’s political ideology. Thus, Islam as a religion in China is transformed and molded into the China Story.