Christianity in China

Christianity has been present in China since the early medieval period, and became a significant presence in the country during the early modern era. The Church of the East appeared in China in the 7th century, during the Tang dynasty. But it did not take root in China until its reintroduction by the Jesuits during the 16th century. Beginning in the early 19th century, Protestant missions in China attracted small but influential followings, and independent Chinese churches were also established.

Accurate data on Chinese Christians is difficult to access. There were around 4 million Christians before 1949 (3 million Catholics and 1 million Protestants). The number of Chinese Christians had increased significantly since the easing of restrictions on religious activities during the reform and opening up of the late 1970s. On the other hand, some international Christian organizations estimate that there are tens of millions more, who choose not to publicly identify as such.

For most of Chinese imperial history, religious practice was tightly controlled by the state. The People's Republic of China also heavily regulates religion, and has increasingly implemented a policy of sinicization of Christianity since 2018. However, many Chinese Christians are members of informal networks and underground churches, often known as house churches. These began to proliferate during the 1950s when many Christians rejected the state-controlled bodies. Members of house churches represent diverse theological traditions, and have been described as representing a "silent majority" of Chinese Christians.

Terminology

thumb|left|[[Han Chinese Christians lighting candles in a church in Shunyi, Beijing.]]

There are various names used for the Abrahamic God in the Chinese language, the most prevalent of them is "Shangdi" (), commonly used by both Protestants and non-Christians, and "" (), commonly used by Catholics. The word "Shen" (), which is also used by Chinese Protestants, may also refer to deities or the generative powers of nature in the context of Chinese traditional religion. In addition, Christians have historically adopted terms from the Chinese classics as references to God, such as 'Ruler' () and 'Creator' ().

Chinese terms for Christian denominations include "Protestantism" (), "Catholicism" (), and "Eastern Orthodoxy" (). Orthodox Christianity as a whole is referred to as . Christians in China are referred to as or .

History

Pre-modern history

The significant lack of evidence of Christianity's existence in China between the 3rd century and the 7th century can likely be attributed to the barriers which were placed in Persia by the Sassanids and the closure of the trade route in Turkestan.

Both events prevented Christians from staying in contact with their mother church, the Syriac Antiochian Church, thereby halting the spread of Christianity until the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang (627–649). Taizong, who had studied the Christian Scriptures which were given to him by the Assyrian missionary Alopen, realized "their propriety and truth and specifically ordered their preaching and transmission."

thumb|The [[Xi'an Stele was erected in 781, and documents 150 years of early Christian history in China. It includes texts both in Chinese and in Syriac.]]thumb|upright=0.8|A [[Mogao Christian painting|9th-century silk painting depicting a saint, probably Jesus Christ]]

thumb|upright=0.8|Christian tombstone from [[Quanzhou with a 'Phags-pa inscription dated 1314.]]

Early period

The Christian apologist Arnobius (died ) claimed in his work Against the Heathen: Book II, that Christianity had reached the land of "Serica"—an ancient Roman name for northern China. However, to date, there is little to no archaeological evidence or knowledge about the pre-Church of the East classical Chinese and/or Tocharian church.

Two (possibly Church of the East) monks were preaching Christianity in India in the 6th century before they smuggled silkworm eggs from China to the Byzantine Empire.

The first documentation of Christianity entering China was written on the 8th-century Xi'an Stele. The stele records that Christians reached the Tang capital of Xi'an in 635, and were allowed to establish places of worship and to propagate their faith. The leader of the Christian travellers was Alopen, and his meeting with Emperor Taizong was the most influential development in Chinese Christian history yet, leading to the spread of the religion to a much greater extent than ever before. Seven Chinese Christian texts survived from that period.

Some modern scholars question whether Nestorianism is the proper term for the Christianity that was practised in China, since it did not adhere to what was preached by Nestorius. They instead prefer to refer to it as "Church of the East", a term which encompasses the various forms of early Christianity in Asia.

Despite inaccuracies by Tang historians regarding Christian history and doctrine, there was a significant community of scholars who translated the Old and New Testaments into Literary Chinese, and understood them fully.

In 845, at the height of the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, Emperor Wuzong of Tang decreed that Buddhism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism be banned, and their very considerable assets forfeited to the state.

In 986 a monk reported to the Patriarch of the East:

<blockquote>Christianity is extinct in China; the native Christians have perished in one way or another; the church has been destroyed and there is only one Christian left in the land.</blockquote>

Karel Pieters noted that some Christian gravestones are dated from the Song and Liao dynasties (ca. 900s to 1200s), implying that some Christians remained in China in these eras.

Medieval period

thumb|150px|Painting of Chinese Martyrs of 1307, Chapel of the Martyrs of Nepi in Katowice Panewniki

thumb|150px|"[[Murals from the Christian temple at Qocho|Procession on Palm Sunday", in a 7th- or 8th-century wall painting from a Church of the East church in Tang China]]

Christianity was a major influence in the Mongol Empire, as several Mongol tribes were primarily Church of the East Christian, and many of the wives of Genghis Khan's descendants were Christian. Contacts with Western Christendom also began in this time period, via envoys from the papacy to the capital of the Yuan dynasty in Khanbaliq (present-day Beijing).

Church of the East Christianity was well established in China, as is attested by the monks Rabban Bar Sauma and Rabban Marcos, both of which had made a famous pilgrimage to the West, visiting many Church of the East communities along the way. Marcos was elected as Patriarch of the Church of the East, and Bar Sauma went as far as visiting the courts of Europe in 1287–1288, where he told Western monarchs about Christianity among the Mongols.

In 1294, Franciscan friars from Europe initiated mission work in China. For about a century they worked in parallel with the Church of the East Christians. The Franciscan mission disappeared from 1368, as the Ming dynasty set out to eject all foreign influences.

The Chinese called Muslims, Jews, and Christians starting in the Yuan dynasty by the same name, "Hui Hui" (Hwuy-hwuy). Christians were called "Hwuy who abstain from animals without the cloven foot", Muslims were called "Hwuy who abstain from pork", Jews were called "Hwuy who extract the sinews". "Hwuy-tsze" (Hui zi) or "Hwuy-hwuy" (Hui Hui) is presently used almost exclusively for Muslims, but Jews were still called "Lan Maou Hwuy tsze" (Lan Mao Hui zi) which means "Blue-cap Hui zi". At Kaifeng, Jews were called "Teaou-kin-keaou", "extract-sinew religion". Jews and Muslims in China shared the same name for synagogue and mosque, which were both called "Tsing-chin sze" (Qingzhen si), "temple of purity and truth", the name dated to the thirteenth century. The synagogue and mosques were also known as "Le-pae sze" (Libai si). A tablet indicated that Judaism was once known as "Yih-tsze-lo-nee-keaou" (Israelitish religion) and synagogues known as "Yih-tsze lo née leen" (Israelitish temple), but it faded out of use.

It was also reported that competition with the Catholic Church and Islam were also factors in causing Church of the East Christianity to disappear in China; Catholics also considered the Church of the East as heretical, speaking of "controversies with the emissaries of [...] Rome, and the progress of Mohammedanism, sapped the foundations of their ancient churches."

Kublai Khan doubled down on anti-Muslim anti-Halal slaughter laws under pressure from Christians like Isa Kelemechi who served in Kublai's court, according to Rashid al-Din. Isa Kelemechi was also instrumental in reinforcing anti-Muslim prohibitions in the Mongol realms, such as prohibiting halal slaughter and circumcision, and, according to Rashid al-Din encouraged denunciation of Muslims. Isa Kelemechi also showed to Khubilai the Muslim precept of "Kill the polytheists, all of them", raising the suspicion of the Mongols towards Muslims. and made influential converts like Xu Guangqi, establishing Christian settlements throughout the country and becoming close to the imperial court, particularly its Ministry of Rites, which oversaw official astronomy and astrology. Ricci and others including Michele Ruggieri, Philippe Couplet, and François Noël undertook a century-long effort in translating the Chinese classics into Latin and spreading knowledge of Chinese culture and history in Europe, influencing the developing Enlightenment.

The Jesuits also promoted phenomena of artistic hybridization in China, such as Chinese Christian cloisonné productions.

The introduction of the Franciscans (the first round of Catholic Church clergy to have come during this era) and other orders of missionaries, however, led to a long-running controversy over Chinese customs and names for God. The Jesuits, the secularized scholar-bureaucrats, and eventually the Kangxi Emperor himself maintained that the Chinese veneration of ancestors and Confucius were respectful but non-religious rituals compatible with Christian doctrine; other orders pointed to the beliefs of the common people of China to show that it was impermissible idolatry and that the common Chinese names for God confused the Creator with His creation. Acting on the complaint of the Bishop of Fujian, Pope Clement XI finally ended the dispute with a decisive ban in 1704; his legate Charles-Thomas Maillard De Tournon issued summary and automatic excommunication of any Christian permitting Confucian rituals as soon as word reached him in 1707. By that time, however, Tournon and Bishop Maigrot had displayed such extreme ignorance in questioning before the throne that the Kangxi Emperor mandated the expulsion of Christian missionaries unable to abide by the terms of Ricci's Chinese catechism. Tournon's policies, confirmed by Clement's 1715 bull led to the swift collapse of all of the missions across China, It was not until 1939 that the Catholic Church revisited its stance, with Pope Pius XII permitting some forms of Chinese customs. The Second Vatican Council later confirmed the new policy.

17th to 18th centuries

Further waves of missionaries came to China during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) as a result of contact with foreign powers. Russian Orthodoxy was introduced in 1715 and Protestants began entering China in 1807.

The Yongzheng Emperor was firmly against Christian converts among his own Manchu people. He warned them that the Manchus must follow only the Manchu way of worshipping Heaven since different peoples worshipped Heaven differently. He stated:

<blockquote>The Lord of Heaven is Heaven itself. . . . In the empire we have a temple for honoring Heaven and sacrificing to Him. We Manchus have Tiao Tchin. The first day of every year we burn incense and paper to honor Heaven. We Manchus have our own particular rites for honoring Heaven; the Mongols, Chinese, Russians, and Europeans also have their own particular rites for honoring Heaven. I have never said that he [Urcen, a son of Sun] could not honor heaven but that everyone has his way of doing it. As a Manchu, Urcen should do it like us.</blockquote>

19th to 20th centuries

thumb|200px|Stations of the [[China Inland Mission in 1902, with hubs in Zhejiang, and between Gansu, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan.]]

By the 1840s China became a major destination for Protestant missionaries from Europe and the United States. Catholic missionaries, who had been banned for a time, returned a few decades later. It is difficult to determine an exact number, but historian Kathleen Lodwick estimates that some 50,000 foreigners served in mission work in China between 1809 and 1949, including both Protestants and Catholics. They encountered significant opposition from local elites, who were committed to Confucianism and resented Western ethical systems. Missionaries were often seen as part of Western imperialism. The educated gentry were afraid for their own power. The mandarins claim to power lay in the knowledge of the Chinese classics—all government officials had to pass extremely difficult tests on Confucianism. The elite currently in power feared this might be replaced by the Bible, scientific training and Western education. Indeed, the examination system was abolished in the early 20th century by reformers who admired Western models of modernization.

The main goal was conversions, but they made relatively few. They were much more successful in setting up schools, as well as hospitals and dispensaries. They avoided Chinese politics, but were committed opponents of opium. Western governments could protect them in the treaty ports, but outside those limited areas they were at the mercy of local government officials and threats were common. They were a prime target of attack and murder by Boxers in 1900.

thumb|150px|Robert Morrison of the [[London Missionary Society.]]

thumb|150px|A [[Gospel tract printed by the China Inland Mission, With a strong fundamentalist approach.]]

Protestant missions

140 years of Protestant missionary work began with Robert Morrison, arriving in Macau on 4 September 1807. Morrison produced a Chinese translation of the Bible. He also compiled a Chinese dictionary for the use of Westerners. The Bible translation took 12 years and the completion of the dictionary, 16 years.

Hostile laws

The Qing government code included a prohibition of "Wizards, Witches, and all Superstitions". The Jiaqing Emperor, in 1814, added a sixth clause with reference to Christianity, modified in 1821 and printed in 1826 by the Daoguang Emperor prohibiting those who spread Christianity among Han Chinese and Manchus. Christians who would not renounce their conversion were to be sent to Muslim cities in Xinjiang, to be given as slaves to Muslim leaders and beys. Some hoped that the Chinese government would discriminate between Protestantism and the Catholic Church, since the law was directed at Rome, but after Protestant missionaries in 1835– 36 gave Christian books to Chinese, the Daoguang Emperor demanded to know who were the "traitorous natives in Canton who had supplied them with books".

Hospitals and schools

Christians established clinics and hospitals, and provided training for nurses. Both Catholics and Protestants founded educational institutions from the primary to the university level. Some prominent Chinese universities began as religious-founded institutions. Missionaries worked to abolish practices such as foot binding, and the unjust treatment of maidservants, as well as launching charitable work and distributing food to the poor. They also opposed the opium trade and brought treatment to many who were addicted.

Expanding beyond the port cities

thumb|Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), leader of the China Inland Mission

By the early 1860s, the Taiping movement was almost extinct, Protestant missions at the time were confined to five coastal cities. By the end of the century, however, the picture had vastly changed. Scores of new missionary societies had been organized, and several thousand missionaries were working in all parts of China. This transformation can be traced to the unequal treaties which forced the Chinese government to admit Western missionaries into the interior of the country, the excitement caused by the 1859 Great Awakening in Britain. A major role was played by Hudson Taylor (1832–1905). Taylor (Plymouth Brethren) arrived in China in 1854. Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette wrote that Hudson Taylor was "one of the greatest missionaries of all time, and ... one of the four or five most influential foreigners who came to China in the nineteenth century for any purpose."

The China Inland Mission, based in London with a strong appeal to fundamentalist and evangelical Anglicans, was the largest mission agency in China and it is estimated that Taylor was responsible for more people being converted to Christianity than at any other time since the days of the apostles. Out of the 8,500 Protestant missionaries that were at one time at work in China, 1,000 of them were from the China Inland Mission. Dixon Edward Hoste, the successor to Hudson Taylor, originally expressed the self-governing principles of the Three-Self Church, at the time he was articulating the goal of the China Inland Mission to establish an indigenous Chinese Church that was free from foreign control.

In imperial-times Chinese social and religious culture, there were charitable organizations for virtually every social service: burial of the dead, care of orphans, provision of food for the hungry. The wealthiest people in every community (typically the merchants) were expected to give food, medicine, clothing, and even cash, to people in need. According to Caroline Reeves, a historian at Emmanuel College in Boston, that began to change with the arrival of American missionaries in the late 19th century. One of the reasons they gave for being there was to help the poor Chinese.

By 1865, when the China Inland Mission began, there were already thirty different Protestant groups at work in China. However, the diversity of denominations represented did not equate to more missionaries on the field. In the seven provinces in which Protestant missionaries had already been working, there were an estimated 204 million people with only 91 workers, while there were eleven other provinces in inland China with a population estimated at 197 million, for which absolutely nothing had been attempted. Besides the London Missionary Society, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, there were missionaries affiliated with Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Wesleyans. Most missionaries came from England, the United States, Sweden, France, Germany, Switzerland, or the Netherlands.

Secular books

In addition to the publication and distribution of Christian literature and Bibles, the Protestant missionary movement in China furthered the dispersion of knowledge with other printed works of history and science. As the missionaries went to work among the Chinese, they established and developed schools and introduced medical techniques from the West.

Opposition

Local affairs in China were under the control of local officials and the land-owning gentry. They led the opposition to missionary work. According to historian Paul Varg:

:The Chinese hostility to the missionary was based first of all on the fact that Western Christianity was utterly strange and incomprehensible to the Chinese. There was also the opposition based on what they did understand, namely the missionary's revolutionary program. The literati sensed from the very beginning that Christianization would deprive them of their power. So intense was their hostility that few missionaries considered it worthwhile to make any effort to win them over.

In December 1897, Wilhelm II declared his intent to seize territory in China, which triggered a "scramble for concessions" by which Britain, France, Russia and Japan also secured their own sphere of influence in China. After the German government took over Shandong, many Chinese feared that the foreign missionaries and possibly all Christian activities were imperialist attempts at "carving the melon", i.e., to colonize China piece by piece.

Local gentry published hate literature against the foreign missionaries. One tract featured foreign missionaries praying to crucified pigs—the Catholic term for God was Tianzhu (Heavenly Lord), in which the Chinese character "zhu" had the same pronunciation as the word for "pig". The pamphlet also showed Christian clergy engaging in orgies following Sunday services and removing the placentas, breasts, and testicles from kidnapped Chinese. It concluded with repeated calls for their extermination by vigilantes and the government.

The Boxer Rebellion was in large part a reaction against Christianity in China. Missionaries were harassed and murdered, along with tens of thousands of converts. In 1895, the Manchu Yuxian, a magistrate in the province, acquired the help of the Big Swords Society in fighting against bandits. The Big Swords practices heterodox practices, however, they were not bandits and were not seen as bandits by Chinese authorities. The Big Swords relentlessly crushed the bandits, but the bandits converted to the Catholic Church, because it made them legally immune to prosecution under the protection of the foreigners. The Big Swords proceeded to attack the bandits' Catholic churches and burn them. Yuxian only executed several Big Sword leaders, but did not punish anyone else. More secret societies started emerging after this.

French Catholic missionaries were active in China; they were funded by appeals in French churches for money. The Holy Childhood Association (L'Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance) was a Catholic charity founded in 1843 to rescue Chinese children from infanticide. It was a target of Chinese anti-Christian protests notably in the Tianjin Massacre of 1870. Rioting sparked by false rumors of the killing of babies led to the death of a French consul and provoked a diplomatic crisis.

Popularity and indigenous growth (1900–1925)

right|thumb|A Catholic church by the [[Lancang River River at Cizhong, Yunnan. It was built by French missionaries in the mid-19th century, but was burnt during the anti-foreigner movement in 1905 and rebuilt in the 1920s. The congregation is mainly Tibetan, but some members are of Han, Naxi, Lisu, Yi, Bai and Hui ethnicity.]]

Many scholars see the historical period between the Boxer Uprising and the Second Sino-Japanese War as a golden age of Chinese Christianity, as converts grew rapidly and churches were built in many regions of China. Paul Varg argues that American missionaries worked very hard on changing China:

<blockquote> The growth of the missionary movement in the first decades of the [20th] century wove a tie between the American church-going public and China that did not exist between the United States and any other country. The number of missionaries increased from 513 in 1890 to more than 2,000 in 1914, and by 1920 there were 8,325 Protestant missionaries in China. In 1927 there were sixteen American universities and colleges, ten professional schools of collegiate rank, four schools of theology, and six schools of medicine. These institutions represented an investment of $19 million. By 1920, 265 Christian middle schools existed with an enrollment of 15,213. There were thousands of elementary schools; the Presbyterians alone had 383 primary schools with about 15,000 students.

Following the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Glasgow, Protestant missionaries energetically promoted what they called "indigenization", that is assigning the leadership of churches to local Christian leaders. The Chinese National YMCA was the first to do so. In the 1920s, a group of church leaders formed the National Christian Council of China to coordinate interdenominational activity. Among the leaders were Cheng Jingyi, who was influential at the Glasgow Conference with his call for a non-denominational church. The way was prepared for the creation of the Church of Christ in China, a unified non-denominational church.

After World War I, the New Culture Movement fostered an intellectual atmosphere that promoted Science and Democracy. Although some of the movement's leaders, such as Chen Duxiu, initially expressed admiration for the role that Christianity played in building the strong nations of the West, as well as approving the emphasis on love and social service, Christianity became identified in the eyes of many young Chinese with foreign control of China. The 1923 Anti-Christian Movement attacked missionaries and their followers on the grounds that no religion was scientific and that the Christian church in China was a tool of the foreigners. Such Chinese Protestants as the liberals David Z. T. Yui, head of the Chinese National YMCA, and Y. T. Wu, Wu Leichuan, T. C. Chao, and the theologically more conservative Chen Chonggui responded by developing social programs and theologies that devoted themselves to strengthening the Chinese nation. Y. C. James Yen, a graduate of Yale University, led a program of village reform.

During the May Fourth Movement, Chinese intellectuals and students criticized Christianity for its associations with Western imperialism. Responding to these perspectives, some Chinese Protestant leaders began indigenous church movements seeking to establish Protestant churches in China that were independent of foreign financials, control, or leadership. His journey of faith from Christianity to Taoism and Buddhism, and back to Christianity in his later life was recorded in his book From Pagan to Christian (1959).

Lottie Moon (1840–1912), representing the Southern Baptist, was the most prominent woman missionary. Although an equality-oriented feminist who rejected male dominance, the Southern Baptists have memorialized her as a southern belle who followed traditional gender roles.

Since the Republican era, a trend among Chinese theologians has been to indigenise the divinity of Jesus Christ by bringing Biblical teachings in line with the Confucian tradition. By 1901, China was the most popular destination for medical missionaries. The 150 foreign physicians operated 128 hospitals and 245 dispensaries, treating 1.7 million patients. In 1894, male medical missionaries constituted 14 percent of all missionaries; women doctors were four percent. Modern medical education in China started in the early 20th century at hospitals run by international missionaries. They began establishing nurse training schools in China in the late 1880s, but nursing of sick men by female nurses was rejected by local traditions, so the number of Chinese students was small until the practice became accepted in the 1930s. There was also a level of distrust on the part of traditional evangelical missionaries who thought hospitals were diverting needed resources away from the primary goal of conversions.

Of the 500 hospitals in China in 1931, 235 were run by Protestant missions and 10 by Catholic missions. The mission hospitals produce 61 percent of Western trained doctors, 32 percent nurses and 50 percent of medical schools. Already by 1923 China had half of the world's missionary hospital beds and half the world's missionary doctors.

Due to the essential non-existence of Chinese doctors of Western medicine in China and Hong Kong, the founding of colleges of Western medicine was an important part of the medical mission. These colleges for the training of male and female doctors were separately founded. The training of female doctors was particularly necessary, due to the reluctance of Chinese women to see male doctors.

The Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese was founded in Hong Kong by the London Missionary Society in 1887 for the training of male doctors. Sun Yat-sen the first graduate of this college and the founder of modern China, graduated in 1892. Hong Kui Wong (黄康衢) (1876–1961) graduated in 1900 and then moved to Singapore, where he supported the Xinhai Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen.

The Hackett Medical College for Women, the first medical college for women in China, and its affiliated hospital known as David Gregg Hospital for Women and Children (柔濟醫院), located together in Guangzhou, China, were founded by female medical missionary Mary H. Fulton (1854–1927). Fulton was sent by the Foreign Missions Board of the Presbyterian Church (USA), with the support of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, New York, of which David Gregg was pastor. The college was dedicated in 1902 and offered a four-year medical curriculum. Its graduates include Lee Sun Chau.

Indigenous Christian leaders

Indigenous Christian evangelism started in China in the late 1800s. Man-Kai Wan (1869–1927) was one of the first Chinese doctors of Western medicine in Hong Kong, the inaugural chairman of the Hong Kong Chinese Medical Association (1920–1922, forerunner of the Hong Kong Medical Association), and a secondary school classmate of Sun Yat-sen in the Government Central College (currently known as Queen's College) in Hong Kong. Wan and Sun graduated from secondary school around 1886. Doctor Wan was also the chairman of the board of a Christian newspaper called Great Light Newspaper (大光報) that was distributed in Hong Kong and China. Sun and Wan practiced Western Medicine together in a joint clinic. The father-in-law of Wan was Au Fung-Chi (1847–1914), the secretary of the Hong Kong Department of Chinese Affairs, manager of Kwong Wah Hospital for its 1911 opening, and an elder of To Tsai Church (renamed Hop Yat Church since 1926), which was founded by the London Missionary Society in 1888 and was the church of Sun Yat-sen.

thumb|150px|[[John Sung]]

During World War II, China was devastated by the Second Sino-Japanese War which countered a Japanese invasion, and by the Chinese Civil War which resulted in the separation of Taiwan from mainland China. In this period the Chinese Christian churches and organizations had their first experience with autonomy from the Western structures of the missionary church organizations. Some scholars suggest this helped lay the foundation for the independent denominations and churches of the post-war period and the eventual development of the Three-Self Church and the Catholic Patriotic Church. At the same time the intense war period hampered the rebuilding and development of the churches.

Since 1949

The People's Republic of China (PRC) was declared October 1, 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Chairman Mao Zedong, while the Republic of China led by the Kuomintang maintained its government on Taiwan. The historian Daniel Bays comments that it was "not surprising that this new government, like the emperors of several dynasties of the last millennium, evinced an insistence on monitoring religious life and requiring all religions, for example, to register their venues and leadership personnel with a government office." Christian missionaries left in what was described by Phyllis Thompson of the China Inland Mission as a "reluctant exodus".

The Chinese Protestant church entered the communist era having made significant progress toward self-support and self-government. While the Chinese Communist Party was hostile to religion in general, it did not seek to systematically destroy religion as long as the religious organizations were willing to submit to the direction of the Chinese state. Many Protestants were willing to accept such accommodation and were permitted to continue religious life in China under the name "Three-Self Patriotic Movement". Catholics, on the other hand, with their allegiance to the Holy See, could not submit to the Chinese state as their Protestant counterparts did, notwithstanding the willingness of the Vatican to compromise in order to remain on Chinese mainland—the papal nuncio in China did not withdraw to Taiwan like other western diplomats. Consequently, the Chinese state organized the Catholic Patriotic Church that operates without connection to the Vatican, and the Catholics who continued to acknowledge the authority of the Pope were subject to persecution.

During the Korean War, the United States froze all Chinese assets in the United States and banned the transfer of funds from the United States to within the PRC. Among the effects of these policies was cutting off funding for American-affiliated cultural institutions in China, including Christian colleges and religious institutions. Bibles were destroyed, churches and homes were looted, and Christians were subjected to humiliation. Christianity has grown rapidly, reaching 67 million people, including those in unofficial churches.

Contemporary People's Republic of China

thumb|[[Haidian Christian Church during Christmas 2007, Beijing. Haidian Church is operated by Three-Self Patriotic Movement.]]

Subdivision of the Christian community

Official organizations—the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church and the Chinese Protestant Church

thumb|Virgin Mary Statue in the Chengdu Green Bridge Church, [[Sichuan.]]

The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement are centralised and government-sanctioned Christian institutions which regulate all local Christian gatherings, all of which are required to be registered under their auspices.

Unregistered churches

Many Christians hold meetings outside of the jurisdiction of the government-approved organizations and avoid registration with the government and are often illegal. While there has been continuous persecution of Chinese Christians throughout the twentieth century, particularly during the Cultural Revolution, there has been increasing tolerance of unregistered churches since the late 1970s.

Catholic groups are usually known as underground churches and Protestant groups are usually known as house churches. The Catholic underground churches are those congregations who remain fully faithful to the Pope in Rome and refuse to register as part of the Catholic Patriotic Church. Much of the Protestant house church movement dates back to the coerced unification of all Protestant denominations in the Three-Self Church in 1958. There is often significant overlap between the membership of registered and unregistered Christian bodies, as a large number of people attend both registered and unregistered churches.

Local authorities continued to harass and detain bishops, including Guo Xijin and Cui Tai, who refused to join the state-affiliated Catholic association. Chinese authorities raided or closed down hundreds of Protestant house churches in 2019, including Rock Church in Henan Province and Shouwang Church and Zion Church in Beijing, with their pastor, Jin Tianming and Jin Mingri under house arrest. The government released some of the Early Rain Covenant Church congregants who had been arrested in December 2018, but in December 2019 a court charged Pastor Wang Yi with "subversion of state power" and sentenced him to nine years imprisonment. Several local governments, including Guangzho city, offered cash bounties for individuals who informed on underground churches. In addition, the authority of religious affairs has removed crosses from churches, banned youth under the age of 18 from participating in religious services, and replaced images of Jesus Christ or Virgin Mary with pictures of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping.

Chinese Independent Churches

The Chinese Independent Churches are a group of Christian institutions that are independent from Western denominations. They were established in China in the late 19th and early 20th century, including both the Little Flock or Church Assembly Hall and True Jesus Church. In the 1940s they gathered 200,000 adherents, which was 20% to 25% of the total Christian population of that time.

Miller (2006) explains that a significant amount of the house churches or unregistered congregations and meeting points of the Protestant spectrum, that refuse to join the Three-Self Church—China Christian Council, belong to the Chinese Independent Churches. Congregations of the Little Flock or the True Jesus Church tend to be uncooperative towards the Three-Self Church as to their principle it represents not only a tool of the government but also a different Christian tradition. The pastors of the independent Shouwang and Zion churches in Beijing are noted for having been prosecuted by the government, and are of Korean ethnicity.

The Christianity of Yanbian Koreans has a patriarchal character; Korean churches are usually led by men, in contrast to Chinese churches which more often have female leadership. For instance, of the 28 registered churches of Yanji, only three of which are Chinese congregations, all the Korean churches have a male pastor while all the Chinese churches have a female pastor. Also, Yanbian Korean church buildings are stylistically very similar to South Korean churches, with big spires surmounted by large red crosses. Many of the Korean house churches in China receive financial support and pastoral ordinations from South Korean churches, and some of them are effectively branches of South Korean churches. South Korean missionaries have major influence not only on Korean-Chinese churches but also the Han Chinese churches in mainland China.

Heterodox sects

In China there are also a variety of Christian sects based on biblical teachings that are considered by the government as "heterodox teachings" () or cults, including the Eastern Lightning and the Shouters. They primarily operate in a form similar to the "house churches",

In 2010, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in China revealed its on-going efforts to negotiate with authorities to regularize its activities in the country. The church has had expatriate members worshiping in China for a few decades previous to this, but with restrictions. On March 31, 2020, during its general conference, the church announced its intent to build a temple in Shanghai as a "modest multipurpose meetinghouse." However, the Shanghai Municipal Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau said twice it knew nothing about these plans to build a temple, remarking that these plans were "wishful thinking, not based in reality." In 2024, an article from the Church showed that the Shanghai location had been omitted from the list of temples Church President Russell M. Nelson had announced.

Other movements

The Sino-Christian theology movement promotes a contextual-historicist approach to Christianity in China. This movement was strongly influenced by the 1990s writings of Liu Xiaofeng. There is often significant overlap between the membership of registered and unregistered Christian bodies, as a large number of people attend both registered and unregistered churches.

The Three-Self Church had a membership of 20 million people as of 2012.
2007: three surveys were conducted that year to count the number of Christians in China. One of them was conducted by the Protestant missionary Werner Bürklin, founder of "China Partner", an international Christian organisation, and his team of 7,409 surveyors in every province and municipality of China. The other survey was conducted by professor Liu Zhongyu of the East China Normal University of Shanghai. The surveys were conducted independently and along different periods of time, but they reached the same results. According to the analyses, there were approximately 54 million Christians in China (≈4% of the total population), of whom 39 million were Protestants and 14 million were Catholics.
2008: a survey of religions conducted in that year by Yu Tao of the University of Oxford with a survey scheme led and supervised by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP) and the Peking University, analysing the rural populations of the six provinces of Jiangsu, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Jilin, Hebei and Fujian, each representing different geographic and economic regions of China, found that Christians constituted approximately 4% of the population, of whom 3.54% were Protestants and 0.49% were Catholics.
2008–2009: a household survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) counted 23 million Protestants (independent and registered) in China.
2012: a survey conducted by the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) institute, found Christians forming 2.4% of the population of Han China, or between 30 and 40 million people in absolute numbers. Of these, 1.9% were Protestants and 0.4% were Catholics.

Estimates

2010: the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life estimated over 67 million Christians in China, of which 35 million "independent" Protestants, 23 million Three-Self Protestants, 9 million Catholics and 20,000 Orthodox Christians. Each year, about 500,000 people are baptized as Protestants.

Protestants concentrate mainly in three regions: Henan, Anhui and Zhejiang. In these provinces the Christian population is in the millions, yet small in percentage. For instance, in Zhejiang 2.8% of the population is officially Protestant as of 1999, higher than the national average. The Protestant population consists predominantly of illiterate or semi-illiterate people, elderly people and women. The study points out that "owing to the difficulties of conducting such a [study] in China today – not the least of which is the sheer size of the country – there is [in the study's rough estimation] a margin of error of 20 percent." Christopher Marsh (2011) too has been critical of these overestimations.

{| style="with:100%"

| style="width:50%" |

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Christianity by the years, CGSS surveys

!rowspan="1"|Denomination

!colspan="1"|60+

!colspan="1"|50—60

!colspan="1"|40—50

!colspan="1"|30—40

!colspan="1"|30-

|Catholic||align=center|0.3%||align=center|0.3%||align=center|0.6%||align=center|0.1%||align=center|0.3%

|Protestant||align=center|2.6%||align=center|2.0%||align=center|1.9%||align=center|1.1%||align=center|1.2%

|Total Christian||align=center|2.9%||align=center|2.3%||align=center|2.5%||align=center|1.2%||align=center|1.5%

Demographics by province