The Growth of the Chinese Christian Church...

...is alarming Communist officials.

The numbers speak for themselves. A survey conducted in 2006 suggests that about 300 million Chinese (31% of the population) practice a religion. Government estimates put that number far lower. Among Chinese religious practitioners, two-thirds declared themselves Buddhists or Taoists. The remaining third (100 million people) are Christians.


A leaked report dating from the same year suggests that the real number of Chinese Christians is closer to 130 million – up from just 5 million in 1949 when Mao came to power. Roughly four-fifths are Protestants. In the past 60 years, in other words, the number of Chinese Christians has multiplied by a factor of 25. They now make up between 7%-10% of the population, meaning that Christianity is quite possibly the second religion in China.

The growth of Christianity is all the more remarkable considering it occurred despite decades of bloody persecution under Mao, who viewed the religion as a “foreign” doctrine used to serve the interests of capitalist imperialism. Christianity has now adapted to the local realities and is no longer seen as a strange faith imported from elsewhere. Millions of new devotees are convinced that China will become Christian in a matter of two or three decades.

“I believe Christianity will become the main religion, but not the only one,” says historian Fan Yafeng. A specialist on the Chinese conversion movement, Yafeng is now under close surveillance. In a recent interview, he told Le Nouvel Observateur that by eradicating local religions, the Communist Party had involuntarily made conversion easier for the country’s elite.

“Still, we should remember that the peasants, who were once converted to Christianity by foreign-born ministers, are the ones who managed to keep the flame alive despite facing terrible repression,” says Yafeng. “As soon as they could, they became missionaries themselves. In the 1980s, they converted up to 80% of the inhabitants of certain districts in Henan and Zhejiang.”

And Calvin appears to be very influential:

So when the intellectuals started looking for a spiritual outlet, they had all this groundwork they could rely on. Suspicious of an overly emotional faith, they first focused their attention on theoretical sources, translating the works of Saint Augustine or Calvin, whose doctrine they eventually chose.


“(Calvin) allows us to understand the links between individual faith and society better than anyone else,” says Yu Jie, another well-known Protestant thinker and dissident. “We support the idea of a clear distinction between religion and politics, but without making any concessions on our relationship with God. How does one best practice their faith within their family, at work and in the society? Calvin thought a great deal about this questions and he is the one guiding us today.”

It seems clear that the Christianity now being promoted by intellectuals such as Yu Jie is having an influence on China’s recent civil rights movement. More than half of the lawyers bravely fighting on behalf of victims of various abuses are recent Protestant converts. It is from the notion of love, absent from their country’s traditional philosophical heritage, that they draw the energy and ideals necessary for their actions. “We want to give this society, which is sick with hatred, an evolution model based on love and forgiveness,” says Yu Jie.