Emerging Islamic-Confucian axis in the virtual ummah: Connectivity and constraints in the contemporary China

The key concept of this article is that while the predominant focus of the rise of cyber islamic environments (CIEs) has been on the Middle East and the West, there exists a neglected but emerging trend of the Chinese-speaking Islamic websites in the midst of growing autonomy of civil social movements as well as the state surveillance. Among the ten Muslim nationalities in China, I first surveys the general situations of the cyber environments in China, in which the Hui Islamic webs ites embedded, and then go on to explore the development and features of some representative Hui Islamic websites. This article illustrates the challenge for Chinese CIEs is to resolve the identity politics, on the one hand demonstrating the political loyalty to the sovereign power of People's Republic of China (PRC) and identifying the global ummah in terms of transborder religious solidarity on the other hand. Copyright © 2012 Equinox Publishing Ltd.