Juha Merimaa

Back to spring issue 2004

Christianity is spreading in China at an unprecedented speed. Approximately 2 million new members are baptised annually in the country's Protestant church. And as if the growth rate alone was not amazing, large numbers of the converts seem to come from the wrong group. Many of the baptised are young, affluent, well-educated and urban, just the kind of people who in Western countries are most likely to leave the church.

What on earth is all this about?

"A value vacuum," says Miikka Ruokanen, Professor of Dogmatics at the University of Helsinki, who also works as a guest professor in the Renmin University of China in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai. "Official ideology is losing ground but, at the same time, traditional Taoism is felt to be distant and old-fashioned. Confucianism exerts an influence as an ethical system but it cannot satisfy the religious needs of the Chinese. So, there is a demand for new values and beliefs." Ruokanen emphasises the fact that despite its strong position and popularity among minorities, Islam does not interest the mainstream Chinese. Thus, Buddhism and Christianity emerge as winners.

Professor Yang Huilin, Director of a research institute focusing on Christian culture at the Renmin University of China, also sees the desire to imitate the West in the background of urban conversions. "The breakthrough of Western economic thinking has also brought the idealisation of the Western way of life. Many young urban people feel that Christianity is part of this lifestyle and set of values, and that is why many educated people let themselves be baptised," he explains. However, highly educated urban people are not the whole story of converts. Baptisms are also common in poor rural areas, where people feel that the powers that be have abandoned them by their policies focusing on cities.

Official and non-registered congregations

Professor Yang visited Finland as one of the speakers of the Chinese-Nordic "Christianity and Chinese Culture" conference in Lapland in August 2003. The conference, organised by University of Helsinki's Department of Systematic Theology, Nordic Institute for Missionary and Ecumenical Research NIME and the Union for Christian Culture, was part of the Christianity in the Asian Religious Context research programme, headed by Ruokanen and funded by the Academy of Finland. The conference was the first time leading Chinese Christianity scholars from the country's church and universities gathered in the same conference.

Studying religions is quite a new discipline in the Chinese academic world. Established in 1996, the institute directed by Professor Yang was the first in China to study religion and Christianity in particular. Since then, about a dozen similar institutes have been established in different parts of China. In China, training of priests takes place outside the official educational system in seminaries run by the churches, and the religious and academic life have very few contacts. However, from an academic point of view, the topic is vast and full of contradictions.

Along with Buddhism, Taoism and Islam, China's Protestant and Catholic churches are among the five official religions of China. The official Protestant church of China has 20 million members and the Catholic church has 5 million more. Furthermore, it is estimated that as many people belong to non-registered, or so-called underground, churches.

The church is controlled by the state, but officially the state hardly interferes with affairs of the church. Why, then, do people hide in underground churches?

"I think it is a question of different views between congregations, and disappointment in the level of theology in the official churches," says Yang cautiously. "The majority of priests have very little education and many underground congregations may feel that they understand the Bible better than the official church."

Ruokanen has a different point of view. "The division into official and unofficial churches occurred right after the Revolution, when churches were expected to make concessions and show strict solidarity with the new regime. Many Christians did not approve of the concessions, but would rather exercise their religion in secret. The division is still alive although times have become much freer."

But how free is a church controlled by the state? Some of the concessions demanded of the official churches have been hard. For instance, China's Catholic church had to sever its ties with the Vatican already in the 1950s. Images spring to mind of the much-publicised attempts by the Chinese authorities to suppress the religious-political Falun Gong movement.

Are not such activities also reflected on the freedom of the Christian church?

"As a matter of fact, I'd say the opposite is true," Yang says. "The religious circles were the first to campaign against Falun Gong. Unlike Falun Gong, Christian churches have no political goals in China. Indeed, I'd say that the Party sees China's Christian church as an ally, not a threat."

60 million Christians?

Despite the rapid growth of Christianity, Yang does not believe that it will ever become China's main religion. "When you look at China's neighbours, such as Japan or Thailand, the share of those professing Christianity is approximately five percent. I'd estimate the numbers to stabilise at approximately the same also in China."

Ruokanen feels Yang's estimate is too cautious. "Never before have such large numbers of people lived in such an obvious value vacuum. Who knows how religions will grow there?" he asks.

However, it is good to remember that as China has 1.2 billion inhabitants, even Yang's cautious estimate of five percent would mean over 60 million Chinese Christians.