This month, China’s National People’s Congress held its annual meeting and passed a new law on ‘promoting ethnic unity and progress’. The legislation further codifies the suppression of non-Han languages and customs in China in the name of national cohesion and civilisational uplift.

For years, the Party-State has dictated the correct way to be Chinese and subjected the Uyghurs and other Muslim populations in Xinjiang to mass internment, high-tech surveillance, and forced assimilation. Yet, for centuries, Muslims have been an integral part of the country we call China today. Islamic and Confucian cultures learned from and enriched each other. What does it mean to be Muslim in China, historically and in the present? What has led to the current repression in Xinjiang, and how might one survive and struggle against state violence and authoritarian control in the year 2026?

For this episode, Yangyang spoke with historian Rian Thum and anthropologist Darren Byler on the past and present of the Uyghur homeland, and how identities can survive in community and through the written word.