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Counting Christians in China: a Cautionary Report Tony Lambert

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Counting Christians in China: a Cautionary Report Tony Lambert 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 China, 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 Catholic Church 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 house church 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 Cultural Revolution. 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,
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