(Newswire.net — April 22, 2014) Bournemouth, DORSET — Officially being an atheist country, it has been reported that China is rapidly changing as a large number of its 1.3 billion population seek meaning of life and spiritual growth that communism nor capitalism can not satisfy.
China is poised to become the world’s number one economy as well as being the most numerous Christian nation.
A Purdue university sociology professor, Fenggang Yang says, “By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon. It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change.”
In 1949 China had one million Protestants which has grown to 58 million in 2010 compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre’s Forum on Religion and Public Life. Prof Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025.
An online Tea Leaf Nation report states, quoting information from its sister publication, Foreign Policy, says a search for the word ‘Bible’ yielded over 17 million recent results, while the iconic Quotations of Chairman Mao, a widely distributed collection of writings by the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party received fewer than 60,000 mentions. ‘Christian congregation’ was mentioned over 41.8 million times, whereas ‘the Communist Party’ clocked in at just 5.3 million mentions,” contributor Bethany Allen wrote.
To evade the prying eyes of the Communist Party, millions of Prostestants worship in so called underground churches in people’s homes.
Some Chinese officials agree with British prime minister, David Cameron, last week when he said Christianity could help boost Britain’s “spiritual, physical and moral” state.
Earlier this month we saw the Christians’ growing power when in Wenshou, known as the “Jerusalem of the East”, thousands went to defend a church after it was threatened to be demolished by the government.
After this massive public show of resistance the officials have backed away and a compromise was negotiated with the church leaders.It has been said by Christian leaders that officials “do not trust the church, but they have to tolerate or accept it because the growth is there.
The number of Christians is growing – they cannot fight it. They do not want the 70 million
Christians to be their enemy.”
China is also one of the world’s top Bible publishers having the greatest output for export consumption. The Economist in 2013 reported on the growth of Amity Printing, the only firm permitted by the government to print Bibles.
Nanjing, a very affluent Shanghai eastern city, where the firm’s factory is situated, “has the capacity to produce around 18 (million) Bibles a year in more than 90 languages, including English, Swahili, Zulu and Russian, as well as Braille editions. The 100-millionth Bible, printed last year, is displayed proudly in the lobby.”
In his 2002 article, “Market Economies With Churches and Market Economies Without Churches,” Zhao Xiao a well known Chinese economist and Christian said, “that China needs a moral foundation and therefore needs Christianity.”
He concluded that a strong economy requires a moral force to transcend the drive for profit and to infuse the business community with respect for people, contracts and the planet.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10776023/China-on-course-to-become-worlds-most-Christian-nation- within-15-years.html
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/04/11/standing-up-for-christians-in-china-is-about-standing-up-for- conscience/
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/855208.shtml#.U1YP_1VdWSo
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865601509/Next-big-Christian-nation-China-one-expert-says.html