About Islamic Association of China

Islamic Association of China

The Islamic Association of China is the official national organisation of Islam in the People's Republic of China. Established in Beijing on 11 May 1953, it was the first unified national Islamic organisation in Chinese history, bringing together Muslims of the country's ten traditionally Muslim ethnic groups — including the Hui, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars, Tajiks, Dongxiang, Salar and Bao'an — within a single national body. Its official website is chinaislam.net.cn, and it is headquartered in Beijing, in the Huangsi area of Xicheng District.

The association is one of the five national religious bodies recognised in China's religious framework, confirmed at the 1980 national conference for religious groups, and since 2018 it has been overseen by the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, following the absorption of the State Administration for Religious Affairs into that department. It has held ten national representative conferences. Its functions include Islamic education through the China Islamic Institute and a network of regional Islamic colleges, the organisation of the annual Hajj pilgrimage for Chinese Muslims, publication of the journal China Muslims, and exchanges with Islamic organisations abroad.

Establishment on 11 May 1953

The association's founding was initiated in July 1952, when Muslim leaders Burhan Shahidi, Liu Geping, Saifuddin Azizi, Yang Jingren, Da Pusheng, Ma Jian, Pang Shiqian and Ma Yuhuai met in Beijing to prepare a national Islamic organisation. A preparatory committee, headed by Burhan Shahidi — a Uyghur revolutionary leader who was then chairman of the Xinjiang provincial government, with the Hui scholar Da Pusheng among its vice directors — organised the new body's first activities, including the Chinese Muslim Hajj delegation efforts of 1952, among the new republic's earliest exercises in people's diplomacy towards the Arab world.

On 11 May 1953 the Islamic Association of China was formally established in Beijing, with representatives of ten Muslim ethnic groups at its inaugural meeting. It was designed, in the words of its published history, to build bridges between all Chinese Muslims, and it remains historically significant as the first occasion on which China's diverse Muslim communities — divided by language, region and ethnic tradition — were united in one national organisation. Burhan Shahidi became its first president.

Presidents and leadership

The association's presidents have been drawn from China's Muslim political and religious leadership. Burhan Shahidi served first, followed by Zhang Jie, Shen Xiaxi, and An Shiwei. Chen Guangyuan, a Hui imam and Arabic calligrapher born in Hebei in 1932, served three terms as president from 2001 to 2016, concurrently leading the China Islamic Institute and the Beijing Islamic Institute and serving on the standing committee of the national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference; he died in Beijing on 11 May 2020. Yang Faming, also rendered Yang Zhibo, succeeded in the association's later leadership, and reference entries record Xilaluding Chen Guangyuan's tenure alongside vice-presidential figures such as Juma Taier.

Leadership of the association combines religious scholarship with public office: its presidents have typically been senior imams or Muslim scholars who also hold national political-consultative roles. The association's departments, as listed in its organisational descriptions, include education administration, international affairs, a Hajj office, research and general administration, reflecting the breadth of its work from seminary training to pilgrimage logistics.

The China Islamic Institute and regional colleges

In 1955 the association founded the China Islamic Institute in Beijing — also rendered the China Islamic College — to train imams and Islamic professionals. It is the highest Islamic educational institution sponsored by the association, offering undergraduate, junior-college and imam-training classes, and it houses the only professional Islamic library in China. The institute's founding class answered a practical need: a national body of trained ahong, or imams, educated within China for service in its mosques.

Beyond Beijing, the association's educational system includes eight regional Islamic colleges, in Xinjiang, Ningxia, Kunming, Lanzhou, Zhengzhou, Qinghai, Shenyang and Beijing. These colleges train religious personnel for the regions with large Muslim populations, teaching Quranic studies, Arabic and Islamic jurisprudence alongside general education. Together with the Beijing institute they form the recognised pathway for the professional training of China's mosque clergy under the national association's guidance.

Organising the Hajj

One of the association's most demanding practical functions is organising the Hajj for Chinese Muslims. The association's Hajj office coordinates the annual pilgrimage — applications, group organisation, charter arrangements, religious guidance and liaison with Saudi authorities — for pilgrims drawn from across China. This work began at the association's very origins: the preparatory committee's 1952 Hajj mission, which travelled as far as Pakistan, was among the People's Republic's first diplomatic ice-breaking attempts towards Arab nations, and organised Chinese Hajj delegations resumed in later decades as a regular feature of the association's work.

The Hajj programme has also figured in the association's international presentation. The documentary Chinese Hajj, co-produced by National Geographic Asia and Chinese partners and broadcast in 2012, followed five Chinese pilgrims of different backgrounds — including a Uyghur man from Kashgar — through their pilgrimage, with association officials shown processing and organising the journey. Association Hajj delegations meet Saudi religious authorities, including the presidency of the Two Holy Mosques, in the course of the annual arrangements.

Publishing, guidance and the steering committee

The association began publishing a journal for Chinese Muslims in 1957, a bimonthly magazine that developed into China Muslims (Zhongguo Musilin), its national periodical carrying religious teaching, news of mosques and associations, and official announcements. In 2001 it set up a Chinese Islamic Steering Committee to guide the interpretation and preaching of Islamic teaching in China, including the preparation of model sermon materials for imams — a function that reflects the national bodies' role in presenting authorised religious interpretation.

Through its Islamic affairs work the association is also involved in matters such as halal certification questions and the registration and guidance of mosques and clergy, exercised in coordination with local Islamic associations across the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. Its headquarters convenes the national representative conferences at which its council and leadership are elected, ten of which had been held by the time of its recent conference cycles.

Interruption and restoration

Like the other national religious bodies, the association's work was interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, when mosques were closed and religious personnel persecuted; its national meeting in April 1980 was its first in seventeen years. That 1980 gathering formed part of the general restoration of religious organisations, at which the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee approved the convening of national conferences for the five recognised religious groups, re-establishing the association's place in the framework it retains today.

The revival restored the China Islamic Institute, the journal and the provincial association network. In 2018, oversight of the association passed to the United Front Work Department with the absorption of the State Administration for Religious Affairs. In 2025, shortly before Ramadan, the association changed its official logo, removing the imagery of a mosque topped by a crescent moon — a change noted in reference entries as part of the visual presentation of Islam in contemporary China.

International role and scholarship

The association represents Chinese Islam abroad, exchanging delegations with Islamic organisations, universities and religious authorities in the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia and beyond. The Middle East Institute's research programme has analysed the association's role in Arabic-speaking outreach — its exchanges with Muslim leaders and institutions, its Hajj diplomacy and its presentation of Chinese Islam — as a significant channel of engagement between China and the Muslim world. Oxford and other academic scholarship on Islam in China treats the association as the central institution of official Islam in the People's Republic.

This international activity continues the association's founding-era pattern: the 1952 Hajj mission and the contacts built around it preceded formal diplomatic relations between China and most Arab states, and the association has remained a vehicle for religious exchange in advance of, and alongside, official diplomacy. Its delegations participate in international Islamic conferences, and it receives foreign Muslim delegations in Beijing and at its institute.

The association today

Today the Islamic Association of China operates from Beijing under the United Front Work Department, publishing China Muslims, running the China Islamic Institute and overseeing its network of eight regional colleges, organising the annual Hajj, and convening its national representative conferences. Its official website, chinaislam.net.cn, carries its announcements and educational materials.

Founded in 1953 by leaders including Burhan Shahidi, Liu Geping, Saifuddin Azizi, Yang Jingren, Da Pusheng and Ma Jian, and led in the twenty-first century by presidents including Chen Guangyuan, the association remains what it was created to be: the single national organisation of China's Muslims, and the institutional centre of Islam in the People's Republic of China — distinct, for directory purposes, from China's individual mosques, regional Islamic colleges and local Islamic associations, which operate within the framework it heads.