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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2020
This study brings the voices of Chinese Muslim modernists back into discussions on polygamy in the Republican era. Starting from the late nineteenth century, abolishing the practice of polygamous marriage became a vital component of Chinese modernizing elites’ vision of modern Chinese society, as they saw polygamy as an obstacle to modernization. Chinese Muslim modernists actively engaged in China's struggle with polygamy. Their dynamic discussions on polygamy were not insignificant and peripheral. On the contrary, when the Republican law promoting monogamy was hard to implement, some Chinese Muslim modernists pushed their fellow Muslims to set examples for other Chinese to obey the law. The Chinese translations of Arabic scholarly work even helped some Chinese Muslim modernists take a different approach to the issue of polygamy by arguing that polygamy, if properly regulated, could be beneficial to modern societies.
I would like to thank David G. Atwill, whose comments significantly improved this article. I am deeply grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback. I also want to thank my colleagues Liu Chang, Cai Yifan, Peng Yongchang, and Kuan-yen Liu, for their suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.