Source: US Dept of State, International Religious Freedom Report 2007 plus news reports
It appears China's crackdown on unregistered Protestant Christians in the lead-up to the Olympics is the most severe for decades.
Last year there were a total of 60 incidents of known house church persecutions affecting nearly 800 people and covering 18 provinces and one municipality, up from 46 cases in 2006, according to a China Aid report.
The crackdown " which has targeted church leaders rather than ordinary members " has continued this year.
In the northern spring of 2007, a campaign, reportedly called "Typhoon Number Five" was launched with the aim of combatting infiltration by foreign missionaries and tightening restrictions on unregistered religious groups.
During the campaign, the Chinese Government expelled as many as 100 foreign Christians including Americans, Australians, Canadians, Swedes, Swiss and South Koreans. This was the largest expulsion of missionaries since 1954.
HOW BIG IS CHRISTIAN REVIVAL IN CHINA?
The secular press has recently recognised that Christianity's growth outside the West is big news.
Less well reported is the most significant subset of this story: the explosion of Christian faith in China.
The size of the Christian population in China is highly controversial.
It has long been suspected that the government has been downplaying religious affiliation. Official statistics in 2006 showed the Christian population increasing by 50 per cent from 14 million to 21 million in less than 10 years. During this period, Protestants increased from 10 million to 16 million.
However a number of organisations say the growth is even faster. The Chinese Church Research Centre (CCRC) based in Hong Kong claims a secret Chinese government report on the growth of Protestant Christianity put the Christian population at 65 million.
Compass Direct estimates that there are over 80 million Christians: 20 million are officially registered, 10 million in the major house church networks, 35 million in independent rural house churches and 15 million in independent house churches.
David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for TIME magazine, in his book Jesus in Beijing estimated the Chinese Christian population at 90 million.
The discrepancies are somewhat understandable because unregistered house church members are almost impossible to count. The World Christian Database estimates that there are about 70 million Chinese associated with more than 300 house church networks among the Han majority alone.
Is there any independent verification?
A February 2007 survey conducted by researchers in Shanghai and reported in Chinese state-run media concluded that just over 31 per cent of Chinese citizens age 16 and over, or 300 million persons, practise a religion. This is approximately three times the official figure reported by the government.
These researchers found the majority of religious believers were Buddhists, estimating the Christian population at 40 million.
In October last year, two further surveys were conducted to estimate the number of Christians in China.
One poll was held by Protestant missionary Werner Burklin, the other by Liu Zhongyu from East China Normal University in Shanghai.
The surveys were conducted independently and during different periods, but they reached the same results. According to these studies, there are roughly 54 million Christians in China, of whom 39 million are Protestants and 14 million are Roman Catholics.
So does this all mean that tales of church growth in China are exaggerated?
Not at all. The fact that there were only 700,000 Protestants in 1949 when the Communists took over is proof enough of the massive scale of Christian revival since the 1980s.
