In an apparent move to appease its 20 million-strong Muslim minority, Communist China plans to build mosques across the country to meet their religious requirement.
Authorities are addressing a lack of religious facilities for millions of Muslims who have moved to coastal cities in search of jobs and livelihood, a senior official at the State Administration for Religious Affairs said.
A large number of Muslims have migrated to cities from inland regions since 1978 leading to a growing demand for religious facilities, primarily more mosques, greater availability of Islamic food and special graveyards, Deputy Director of the Islamic Department of the SARA Ma Jin was quoted as saying by the state-run China Daily.
By 2008, about three million Muslims, or more than 10 per cent of the country's total Muslim population, had migrated from rural areas in traditional Muslim-concentrated western provinces to coastal cities, according to the Annual Report on China's Religions in 2009.
More than 75 per cent of Muslim migrants left their hometowns in the hope of "better payment" and prospects, it said.
China has a population of about 20 million Muslims who were mostly confined to the two regions. While Hui Muslims estimated to be about 10 million confined to Linxia in China's Gansu province, another 10 million Uyghurs of Turkish origin reside in volatile Xinjiang province.
Xinjiang witnessed large scale riots last year between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in which hundreds were killed. Some coastal provinces, especially the top three in terms of the migrant Muslim population, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Fujian, found themselves ill-prepared to cope with the increasing need for religious facilities.
Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong province, has only four mosques to cater for about 9,800 permanent Muslim residents and another 25,000-40,000 temporary Muslim residents.
Construction of the last mosque, with a seating capacity of about 5,000 and situated near the Muslim Sages Tomb, was completed just ahead of the Asian Games, which opened in early November in Guangzhou.
Ma said some Muslims have to do their religious service outside crowded mosques in some coastal cities, causing not only traffic jams but also misunderstanding between Muslims and other people.
Yiwu, a city in Zhejiang province famous for trading small commodities, has about 5,000 business people from the Middle East each year. "It has transformed a factory building into a temporary mosque for the Muslims," Ma said.
He said that governments at all levels have allocated at least $11 million to build new mosques and repair dilapidated ones over the past 10 years.
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