How many in China are Christians?

Answer 1

Christians in China 60 - 80 million. This is much higher than the figures officially released by the Chinese government and Three-Self Patriotic Movement, which are recognized by both Christian and non-Christian sources as being misleading.

Official figures dating from 2001 (source: Operation World) put it at 91 million. However, for a number of reasons, including double counting, this figure is regarded as unreliable.

Due to persecution, and obvious difficulties in counting a diverse house church movement, some put the true figures anywhere between 30 and 150 million.

Answer 2

Christianity has a significant number of followers and is certainly growing in China, but reliable figures are hard to obtain. Christian commentators seem to overstate the number of Christians in China, and even websites that are apparently official or neutral are resourced by Christian evangelism. On the other hand, the Chinese government seems unaware of the existence of some underground churches, in addition to the normal churches, which means that not all Christians are officially counted.

Recently, I attempted to get an idea of the number of Christians in China from anecdotal evidence. I visited a city of around two million people in eastern China and confirmed that it had two official churches - one Catholic and one Protestant. The Catholic church could seat several hundred people, said to be 500 but perhaps around 700 if necessary, and holds three Masses each Sunday, but was far from full on the day that I visited it. The Protestant church was much smaller, but its numbers overflowed, with believers listening to the service outside on loudpseakers or in assembly rooms on television screens. Overall, I estimated that around three thousand Christians regularly attend Sunday services in this city. I then considered the issue of the underground churches. Naturally, I was unable to visit one, but I assumed that in order to grow, they would have to approach young people likely to consider the new religion. On enquiry, I elicited surprise that underground churches even existed, suggesting that the presence was small or that no serious attempt was being made to win converts.

In another medium-sized city, I visited the major public cemetery, where I could identify the graves of those interred within the last twenty years and the last ten years, as new areas are opened up. Of the several hundred gravestones I looked at, I found only three that were identifiably Christian. My assumption was that the dead no longer have anything to fear from the authorities and that their living relatives would want them to be identified as Christians if that were the case.

This was not a very scientific poll and did not address the possibility of greater penetration in, say, the south of China or among the poorly educated rural population. Neverthless, it tended to confirm my existing belief that the percentage of Christians in China is still fairly low and probably well under the 70 to 100 million people often quoted by Christian sources.