From the Shanghaiist:
In a government-sponsored survey on spirituality in China that was conducted earlier this year, officials were shocked to find that 31.4 percent of Chinese 16 or older are religious, putting the number of religious believers in China at approximately 400 million — way higher than initially thought. Over the last few years, as the government realised that perhaps religion was not such a fearful thing after all, people have gone in search for new value systems and spiritual beliefs to replace the communist doctrine which has been slowly jettisoned in China’s unstoppable quest for modernisation.
To the government’s credit, the status of religious freedom has been slowing and steadily improving. With churches bursting through the seams across the land, new ones are being built at an astounding rate like this ultra-modern and very expensive one in Beijing built for top dollar by German architects.[Full Text]
Many moons ago, we had a conversation with a Chinese colleague that went something along the lines of the following:
Colleague: Are you a Christian?
Me: Uhhhhmmmm…. Not a very good one, not a very devout one, but yes I guess you could still say I’m one?
Colleague: Haha, I understand. I’m not a very good CCP member, and not a very bad one either, but you probably can’t say I’m a member anymore. I have not been paying my party membership fees for three years now, and haven’t been keeping up with the meetings, so they probably struck my name off the list…
