China, Islam in, contemporary period - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Israeli, Raphael
Leiden
Brill
(3,545 words)
The status of Islam in China reflects a political landscape that underwent significant changes in the last years of the twentieth century. In the 1980s, as a follow-up to Deng Xiaoping's second revolution, China's phenomenal programme of economic development was launched, and at the same time, the People's Republic also exerted considerable effort to improve its links with the outside world, as a prerequisite to intensifying and diversifying its international trade relations. Those combined and sustained efforts generated an annual national growth rate of 9 to