and Catholicism) are permitted to open the former under certain millionpeoplein the undergroundandthe openCatholicChurch, conditions, they are barred from any involvement in public as well as among non-Christians. Besides relaying news of the education. church within and outside , the newspaper also encour­ Yet in a country where church educational activities remain ages readers to act responsively by sending funds for various drasticallycurtailed, Catholicpublishinghousessuchas Sapientia charitable causes and major catastrophes. Responses have been Press in Beijing, Guangqi Press in Shanghai, and Hebei Faith so enthusiastic that they have led to the establishment of Beifang Press in Shijiazhuang, together with the Protestant Amity Press Jinde (Progress), a Catholic social service center formed to handle in Nanjing, are important means for reaching and educating a donations for charity work in society. great number of Christian and non-Christian Chinese. They Some outside organizations foster a confrontational and publish Bibles, Christian literature, and journals. They have also adversarial position on the situation of the Chinese church. Such reprinted in simplified characters many of the Chinese transla­ groups, however, are in direct defiance of the pope's pleas for tions arriving in recent years from Taiwan and Hong Kong, such understanding, forgiveness, reconciliation, and unity among as the documents of Vatican II, the liturgy of the Mass, the new Chinese Catholics. code of canon law, and the new universal catechism. Unfortu­ The Chinese today is quite different even nately, except for Zhongguo Tianzhujiao (The Catholic Church in from what it was in the 1980s when it emerged from long years China), the official journal of the CCPA, church publications of repression. It is growing in numbers, enjoying relative free­ remain subject to the government censor and may legally be sold dom of worship, and experiencing a renewal of vocations to the only on church premises or through mail order. priesthood and religious life. At the same time, Chinese society The Hebei Faith Press also publishes a biweekly newspaper is also undergoing profound social and economic changes. This called Xinde (Faith). In spite of the restriction just mentioned, it transformation is confronting the church with new issues and has a distribution of 45,000 copies throughout most of the prov­ challenges as it begins to shed its ghetto mentality and to fulfill inces of China, which amounts to a readership of over half a a more meaningful role for various segments of the society. Notes------­ 1. Thisarticleis basedona presentationmadein June2002 at theFrench Rome's approval. Centre for Research on Contemporary China, Hong Kong. 3. For moreonthisquestion, see Kim- KwongChan, Towards aContextual 2. Onthisissue, see theexcellentarticlebyGeoffreyKing, "A Schismatic Ecclesiology: TheCatholic Churchin thePeople's RepublicofChina(1979­ Church? A Canonical Evaluation," in The Catholic Churchin Modern 1983). ItsLifeandTheological Implications (HongKong: ChineseChurch China: Perspectives, ed. EdmondTangandJean- PaulWiest(Maryknoll, Research Center, 1987), pp. 81-82, 443-48. Chan also points out that N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993), pp. 80-102. An explicit decree of leaders of the so-called patriotic church were careful in their use of excommunication was issued to the vicar-general of Nanjing, Li expressions. They "usually employed terms like 'Roman Curia' and Weiguang, for publishing a declaration promoting the Communist ,the Vatican' instead of terms like'the Holy See' or 'the Apostolic interpretationof the three autonomies and accusing the pope andhis See.' The former denotes political status whereas the latter terms nuncio of collusion with the imperialists. This excommunication, signify the religious and ecclesiastical dimension" (p. 79). however, took place before Li's ordination as a bishop without

Counting Christians in China: A Cautionary Report Tony Lambert

ecently I was attending a meeting in Europe at which a thirty years, I came across the following report from 1983 which R evangelist from China was speaking. The epitomizes rather succinctly the problemof counting the number literature being distributed to raise funds stated that he repre­ of Christians in China accurately: "The number of Christians in sented more than 75 million house church believers. When this China now exceeds 100 million, according to two former leaders figure was queried, the Western sponsor retorted, "Well, this of the Chinese house church movement now living in the USA. figure is not gospel truth-give or take a few million either way, Their assessment of the situation is one of the highest in circula­ it doesn't matter!" The publicity of a Hong Kong Christian tion. The official Chinese Three-Self Church says there are six ministry claims that "every year 8 million people come to Christ million Christians (three million Protestants and three million and are baptised in Mainland China." These statistics are impres­ Catholics) while some evangelical agencies take into account sive, but they simply cannot stand up under closer analysis, for what they call'secret believers' and put the figure at between 25 they are backed by no reliable, documented evidence. and 50 million."! This problem is not new. In leafing through my newspaper Though this clipping dates back to just a few years after clippings on the Chinese church, which date back more than Christian churches were allowed to reopen in 1979, the last two decades have seen no resolution to the problem posed by the Tony Lambert, Director of Research for Chinese Ministriesfor OMF Interna­ yawning gulf between statistics issued by the Chinese govern­ tional, isnowbased in theUnitedKingdomafterservingwith hiswife,Frances, ment or state-approved church representatives, and those fig­ for elevenyearsasa missionaryin Hong Kong. Priortojoining OMF in 1982, ures published by some Christian agencies elsewhere. he servedasa diplomatwith the British Embassyin Beijingand haspublished Counting Christians in China is notoriously difficult, butfor two books on the Chinese churchsince the . years Christians, particularly evangelical and charismatic Chris-

6 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 27, No. 1 tians, have seemed willing to accept very high figures without the Religious Affairs Bureau, generally relate to numbers of any real proof. Already inflated estimates have sometimes been baptized church members and to new baptisms each year. They extrapolated and exaggerated ("if in 1983 there were 100 million, do not include children and young people under the age of then now in 2000 there must be 150 million or even 200 million" eighteen, who are forbidden from being baptized and becoming and so on). It is high time such castles in the air were brought church members before adulthood. These statistics are therefore down to earth! In this article I approach the problem by first conservative; also they usually do not include the large numbers reviewing the overall sociopolitical context, and then I assemble of mudaozhe (inquirers or seekers), who maywellbe believersbut what reasonably reliable statistics there are from all sources: the for various reasons have not yet been baptized. It is these statis­ Chinese government, the Three Self churches, and the house tics that are passed up to various party and government agencies church movement. This study will concentrate on the Chinese and that may be published in various national and local statisti­ Protestant churches.' cal handbooks. In 2002 the TSPM/CCC leadership announced that there Inconsistent Statistics-a Widespread Problem were 15 million Protestants in China, which is more than twenty times the number of Protestants there were in 1949, then esti­ We must recognize at the outset that the problem of false statis­ mated at 700,000, when the Communist Party took power. There tics is not confined to the religious sphere in China. An article in are now nearly 50,000 registered churches and meeting points, the respected Hong Kong-based SouthChinaMorning Postsome compared with precisely zero as late as early 1979.5 Church years ago stated: "The truth about the Chinese economy is that membership generally declined during the 1950s because of no-one really knows. Economists and analysts look at the same tightening control and persecution of the church, culminating in events and see differentthings. Addingto the problems, there are the closure of all churches during the Cultural Revolution period severe doubts aboutthe quality of whatthe observers are looking (1966-76) and the three following years until 1979 when Deng at hardest-the economic statistics which flood out of the State Xiaoping was firmly in the saddle and able to reverse many of StatisticalBureau andotherorganizations.:?The article included Mao's extremist policies. Thus this spectacular growth is gener­ a detailed table showing that sixteen economists working for ally reckoned to have taken place over the last twenty-five to sixteen international companies doing business with China­ thirty years, beginning in the early 1970s, when house churches and, more glaringly, two of China's own most prestigious state began to proliferate. Significantly, interviews with provincial organizations-could not agree on China's gross national prod­ leaders of the TSPM/CCC usually provide local statistics that, uct, rate of inflation, industrial production, trade balance, and when totaled, give a figure that is higher and probably more other basic economic statistics. accurate than the figures found in the national handbooks. (See More recently, we could cite the national census of Novem­ table on page 8.) ber 2000, which reports a population of nearly 1.3 billion. This number is almost certainly too low, given the huge number of unemployedpeasantsflooding into the cities (the"floating popu­ Statistics used in the West lation") and distortions stemming from the one-child policy as citizens seek to hide their extra children from official eyes, and to count the Chinese house cadres seek to hide their ownincompetence from their superiors. church are contradictory Suppression and distortion of statistical data were rife in the Mao years. In 1958-62 China suffered a severe famine.' Only in and exaggerated. recent years have statistics been published in obscure Chinese journals confirming that upwards of 30 million people perished because of Mao's utopian policies. Yet at the time, false statistics The official figure for Protestants in China has risen to 15 of bumperharvests were the norm. Local cadres knew thatharsh million, and perhaps about 18 million, based on local estimates realityhad to bow to the party line, so they fabricated statistics to of TSPM/ CCC provincial leaders. As some of the provincial satisfy their superiors. figures are outof date by severalyears, andbearing in mind what Since Mao's death in 1976 and the inauguration of the Open hasbeensaid aboutthe omissionof childrenand seekers from the Door Policy by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, things have slowly statistics, it is not unreasonable to assume that there may be 20 become more transparent as China has developed trade with the million Protestants associated with TSPM-registered churches West and made great progress with economic modernization. and meeting points. The influx of Western businesses and of tourists and, most recently, China's admission to the World Trade Organization House Church Numbers have combined to force reluctant partybureaucrats to collect and publish statistics that bear more relation to the facts. Old Maoist More formidable problems arise when one turns to estimates for habits of secrecy and obfuscation die hard, however, and this is house church believers. All kinds of statistics have appeared in nowhere more true than in the increasingly sensitive area of the West, often contradictory and exaggerated. As far back as religious affairs. 1983, as cited at the beginning of this article, some leaders asserted that there were more than 100 million Christians in Three-Self Statistics China. Not a shred of evidence was given to support this wild assertion. Basic data on church statistics are collected by local representa­ FiguresforHenan. In a similarvein, a 1982reportfrom a house tives of the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), which passes church source in claimed huge church growth in that down government religious policy to the churches, and the province, which most observers now agree has the largest Prot­ (CCC), which is involved in internal estant community of any province in China. According to this pastoral affairs. The data, which these organizations pass on to report,no less than43percentofthetotalpopulationofFangcheng

January 2003 7 County (or 300,000 out of 700,000 people) were house church churches in many parts of China. In a chapter devoted to Henan believers. Some villages in the area were known to be 60 to 70 he estimated that the Christian population of Fangcheng was percent Christian. According to a May 1982 estimate by four only 160,000 (not 300,000) and that the total number in Henan itinerant evangelists, at least 20 percent of Henan's population­ was 10 million out of a total population of 80 million, which 15million outof 75 million people-wereChristians. Theybased would drop the Christian population to 12.5 percent (not 20 or 30 that estimate on attendance at churches they regularly preached percent)." These discrepancies are very large; furthermore, the at in 15 to 20 counties in southwest Henan, as well as on observa­ sources were not trained researchers or statisticians, and their tions of the church in the rest of the province. Separate reports evidence falls far short of the norms expected in surveys of this from northern Henan estimated that 30 percent of the province kind. This is not to criticize the house church leaders; they had become Christian, that is, about 22 million people." minister in clandestine situations, and careful gathering of statis­ These high estimates, however, do not tally with figures tics is low on their list of priorities. Rather, criticism should be from another house church source. En Yu, pseudonym of an­ pointed at Western Christians who accept such guesstimates other house church leader, published a book about the house uncritically and then further extrapolate from them. Even En Yu is careful to say: "Some people estimate that there are 10 million Christians in Henan. Of course this is not necessarily Protestant Christians in China, by Administrative Region reliable. But it cannotbe denied thatthe numberof believers in Christis many" (TSPM/CCC Sources) (my emphasis). Such restraint is com­ Province, mendable. Most house church statis­ autonomous region, Estimated no. tics are very rough estimates and give or municipality of Protestants Source, date only a general indication of massive churchgrowth,whichfew peoplenow Anhui 3,000,000 TSPM leaders to visiting ecumenical delega­ would deny is indeed occurring. tion, October 1995 Beijing 30,000 Swedish Missiological Themes 87, no. 4 (1999): Nine house church leaders. In Au­ 491 ("4,500 baptized annually") gust 1998 leaders of nine major house Chongqing 270,000 Chongqing Zongjiao (Chongqing's Religions) church groupings issued a statement (Chongqing: Chongqing Publishing in which they claimed there were "ap­ House, 2000), p. 325 proximately ten million believers of Fujian 700,000 TSPM spokesman in U.S.A., February 1999 the Three Self churches and eighty Gansu 100,000 Bridge, April 1996 million believers in the home Guangdong 200,000 TSPM delegationin HongKong, October1996 churches.:" The statement listed the Guangxi 90,000 ANS, December 1995 following groupings as being the ma­ Guizhou 360,000 ANS, March 1998 jor house churches operating outside Hainan 37,000 Local TSPM, Bridge, June 1992 Hebei 300,000 Local CCC, November 1998 TSPM control: Heilongjiang 600,000 ANS, October1994("300,000baptized,300,000 seekers") (Chong­ Henan 5,000,000 Local TSPM/CCC estimate to visiting U.K. shengpai) ecumenical delegation, October 1998 Charismatics (Lingenpai) Hubei 400,000 CCC leader to author, November 1999 Assemblies (Juhuichu), also called Hunan 300,000 ANS, June 2000 Shouters tHuhanpai) Inner Mongolia 172,000 Tianfeng, November 2001 Way of Life (Shengming zhi Dao), Jiangsu 1,000,000 TSPM,1998 also called TotalScope (Quanfan­ Jiangxi 400,000 ANS, January 2000 weijiaohui) Jilin 350,000 Tianfeng, July 2000 Little Flock (Xiaoqun) Liaoning 400,000 TSPM, February 1999 Pentecostals (Wuxunjie) Ningxia 12,500 Tianfeng, May 2001 Lutherans outside the TSPM (Bu Qinghai 30,000 Tianfeng, February 1997 canjia Sanzi de Ludehui) Shaanxi 350,000 ANS, April 1997 Baptists (linxinhui) Shandong 800,000 Bridge, October 1993 Shanghai 150,000 TSPM, June 2000 BrotherRen. In 2000 BrotherRen, a Shanxi 200,000 TSPM/CCC, Autumn 1996 spokesman for unregistered house Sichuan 250,000 ANS, September-october 2001 churches, published figures for Chris­ Tianjin 15,000 ANS, September 1997 tians in China as follows: Tibet 100 No registered churches; perhaps 100 in house churches TSPM churches 15 million Xinjiang 40,000 ANS, September 1997 House churches 75 million Yunnan 800,000 CCC elder to author in Kunming, 1996 Unaffiliated 2 million 1,500,000 CCC leaders to the author, June 2002 Catholic (patriotic) 4 million Total 17,856,600 Catholic (underground) 8 million Note: Information about the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao is not The house churches were further bro­ included here. Of the sources cited, ANS (Amity News Service) and the publication Tianfeng (Heavenly wind) are affiliated with the CCC; China Talk and Bridge are publications that ken down into three categories: evan­ typically support the TSPM/CCC. gelical, 33 million; -

8 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 27, No.1 - ~ .. ,. ~... ~ -' • "" • .. ... "'" - ... *' - .. - - • - .. - _.. ~ - '" - ...---- .... -- - ~...... ~ . ... - ...... • ...... • "'" - • ­

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1 3800 BIOLA AVENUE LA MrRADA, CALIFORNIA 90 6 39 - 0001 type, including Local Church, Little Flock, and Gospel Church, stated that the had an "estimated 15 million; and charismatic (Lingen), 33 million. Unfortunately, membership of 500,000."11 A report circulated by a Western these totals do not tally exactly with the total figure of 75 million Christian organization early in 2002, however, stated that this house church believers previously given, and no detailed evi­ movement has "several million believers." There is a wide dis­ dence was provided." crepancy here. Similar discrepancies appear in estimates of the Lausanne Committee. In April 2002 the Lausanne Committee Fangcheng church based in Henan, which is headed by Zhang for World Evangelization reported that a group of top-level Rongliang. In 1998 Zhang told American reporters he led a house church leaders meeting in conference had stated that "the "loose-knit underground flock of 10 million uncompromising official number of believing Christians is about 15 million. The believers.T" However, in 2000 ChristianityToday putthe number unofficial total is about five times that, or approximately 75 of his Fangcheng church believers at only 500,000.13 million people."!" Assuming these figures are only for Protes­ tants and the unofficial total is for all Protestants, bothTSPM and Present Status house church, then the number of house church believers can be reckoned at 60 million. Or, if the "unofficial total" refers only to From the evidence now available it is virtually impossible to house churchbelievers, then they number 75 million. This figure make an accurate estimate of the total number of house church wouldnotbe far off the 1998estimatementionedherebythenine believers in China. Apart from the major networks that have house church leaders. Unfortunately, again there is no detailed coalescedintovirtual denominations, there are tens of thousands breakdown or any proof offered. of smaller groupings and individual isolated meeting points. No Otherhouse church reports. Some house church networks are one is in a positionto visit all of them, a fact thatis largely ignored no doubt very large, with thousands of meeting places across when house church Christians make general estimates. Govern­ China. A house church leader from East China once told me he ment surveillance and continuing persecution militate against had personally helped baptize 1,100 new converts in a baptismal recording and circulating accurate statistics on conversions, servicelastingninehours. The growthof unregistered Christians baptisms, and church membership. Where such figures do exist, is so rapid that government officials and researchers have even leaders are understandably reticent to publish them for fear of coined a phrase to describe it: Jidujiaore ( fever). But attracting unwanted attention from the authorities. reliable estimates are very hard to come by. The Born Again As of December1999Chinahad 663municipalities and1,682 Movementclaimsto be one of thelargestgroups, withsome8,000 counties and other rural districts. What we need is nothing less full-time evangelists and 15,000 voluntary workers. Some ob­ than a statistical survey aimed at obtaining reasonably accurate servers say this group has 4-8 million members; other estimates statistics for both registered and unregistered Christians in each are as high as 23 million. Which figures are closer to the truth? of these more than 2,300 administrative units." Until we have In January 2000 a major report in a well-recognized Hong such information, statistics on the number of Christians in China Kong newspaper on the persecution of house church Christians must be treated with a high degree of caution. Notes------­ 1. Churchof EnglandNewspaper, December 23-30, 1983. Province, August 22, 1998. 2. The Catholic church in China is much smaller, but researchers based 9. Visjon (Bergen, Norway), no. 2 (2002): 4. in Hong Kong seemmore agreed onthe numbers than are those who 10. Pressreleasefrom the LausanneCommitteefor WorldEvangelization, countProtestants.The CatholicPatrioticAssociation(CPA) estimates April 24, 2002. that there are 5 million Catholics (ChinaDaily, June 21, 2001). Most 11. Singtao Daily, January 17, 2000. overseas Catholicresearchers are agreed on a figure of 10-12million, 12. The Oregonian, October 28, 1998. includingbothCPA Catholicsandthe largergroupof "underground" 13. Christianity Today, October 2, 2000, p. 27. Catholics loyal to the pope. 14. I am aware of a book by Chan Kim-kwong and Pong Kwan-wah, 3. South ChinaMorning Post International Weekly, August 13-14, 1994. Zhongguo Fangzhizhong de [idu Zongjiao Ziliao Suoyin, 1980-1998 4. The famine has been documented by Jasper Becker in his Hungry (Index of Christianity in the New Gazetteers of China, 1980-1998) Ghosts: China's SecretFamine (London: John Murray, 1996). (Hong Kong: 1998), that gives page numbers (but no actual data) for 5. See BeijingReview,April 4, 2002, and a statement by Matthew Deng, information on Christian statistics at the county level listed in generalsecretaryof theTSPM, duringa symposiumheldin Pasadena, several hundred local People's Republic of China gazetteers. Very California, February 22-26, 1999. few Western researchers appear to know of the existence of this 6. Chinaand the Church Today, April-May 1982. source of church statistics. As is to be expected, the statistics refer 7. My translationof a paragraphonp. 21 of ShimeinaJiaohui (The church only to official TSPM church statistics, and these numbers are often in Smyrna), by En Yu (San Francisco: China Witness Fellowship, veryoutof date. No housechurchstatisticsare included. Nevertheless, October 1983). this kind of detailed approach, widened to include unregistered 8. Statement in Chinese issued by house church leaders from Henan Christians, provides the basis for a broader study.

10 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 27, No.1