China: the future of Christianity?

With the state now actively financing Christianity, China could well become the largest Christian country in the world

Antonio Weiss, guardian.co.uk, Saturday 28 August 2010 12.00 BST

Ever since Deng Xiaoping's relaxation of the Chinese Communist party's (CCP) suppression of religious practice in the late 1970s, Christianity has flourished in China. This has been an unexpected phenomenon, as it has been a story largely unheralded by the western media. While figures are patchy, it is estimated that the Christian missionaries (of whom the first were the Nestorians as far back as the Tang dynasty in the seventh century) that were expelled from the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 left behind about half a million people baptised – the majority of whom were Catholics. Today, estimates of Christians range between 40 million and 100 million.

Mao Zedong's cultural revolution banned all forms of religious expression, driving Christians underground into "house churches". After the cultural revolution, realising the potential dangers of such uncontrolled practices, the CCP reinstated the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and formed the China Christian Council as the formal registered organisations of Chinese Protestants, as well as the Catholic equivalent – the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. The latter, critically, has no formal links with the Vatican, in large part due to CCP fears of western meddling.

During this period, house churches boomed in popularity. As the New York Times correspondent Nicholas Kristof noted, initially popular among the peasantry, Christianity's reach has extended towards the cities and the wealthy and intellectual Chinese over the last decade.

The reasons for this boom are twofold.

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