Beijing has gotten so very good at Islamic diplomacy that everything from traditional Muslim headdresses to prayer beads and rugs are available for purchase on China’s Ministry of Foreign Commerce Web site. These products are mainly manufactured at Chinese-owned factories in Yiwu, an industrial town in Zhejiang Province that has become a hub of Arab and Muslim commerce in the People’s Republic. The U.S. may have a tough time catching up with China’s new crop of Islamophiles, especially given the GOP candidates’ recent gaffes on Chinese affairs. It seems that China, for which ideology is at once all-important and ever-flexible, could become better skilled at reaching out to certain foreign cultures than the United States, which has spent so much of the post-Cold War era with a monopoly on hard as well as soft power.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/islam-with-chinese-characteristics/251409/ (via Islam in China, http://islaminchina.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/atlantic-article-on-islam-and-china/)