The title of Emily Feng’s dazzling look at President Xi Jinping’s efforts to weed out diversity and instead establish a monocultural Chinese identity comes from a Hui Chinese Muslim man named Yusuf. “Let only red flowers bloom” is Yusuf’s ironic reference to a famous quote from Chairman Mao that, for a moment, opened a relaxation in ideological and cultural control: “let one hundred flowers bloom in social science and arts and let one hundred points of view be expressed in the field of science.”
As author Feng points out in Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China, Chinese government efforts to control thought and expression have ebbed and flowed since the Communists took control in 1949. We see that movement in her fascinating account of Yusuf’s discovery and nurturing of his religious identity. Unlike the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority physically distinctive enough that they can be monitored and controlled by facial recognition technology, Yusuf and his family members are not physically distinct from the majority Han population. But Xi Jinping’s policies risk alienating the Hui people from their deeply integral role in Chinese identity and history as efforts large and small slowly but inexorably suppress Muslim communities. Yusuf himself has been driven into exile.
Yusuf’s is but one of a dozen riveting stories Feng tells here. The opening story is of Yang Bin, a brilliant prosecutor who feels ethically compelled to witness the execution of each person whose terminal conviction she has won. But when she decides to change sides and work for the defense—perhaps because of her conversion to Christianity—she falls into a world of surveillance and suppression. The final story is a chilling look at the Chinese government’s long reach into the Chinese diaspora, including Chinese American communities. In between are other stories of minorities, booksellers and legal activists being hounded and imprisoned.
Feng, a correspondent for NPR, was based in Beijing until 2022 when the Chinese government refused to readmit her to the country, presumably because of her attentive coverage of the Hong Kong protests. Her writing here is concise yet replete with empathy, insight, context and narrative momentum.
Why is Xi Jinping so bent on narrowing the acceptable limits of Chinese identity? Feng says he fears the fate of the Soviet Union, which collapsed, Xi believes, because they allowed their society to splinter. But China is a nation with 55 recognized ethnic minorities and hundreds of local and regional dialects. “It is not,” writes Feng, “a monolith.” Let Only Red Flowers Bloom warns that to make it so will likely require wresting blood from stone.
