China had witnessed big growth in Christianity in the 1980s and 1990s when past communist restrictions on the practice of religion were relaxed.
This week’s survey, however, found that growth come to a virtual standstill in recent years. Between 2010 and 2018 the number of adults identifying as Christian held steady at about 2% and in 2021 fell to 1%.
Nina Shea, senior fellow and director of the Centre for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, told CNA that the declining numbers of China’s Christians are “no surprise.”
“They correlate with Xi’s [Jinping’s] crackdown on Christianity, his so-called ‘Sinicization’ campaign,” she said. For the past five years, “the state has strictly banned all children from any exposure to religion, churches have been blanketed with facial recognition surveillance and linked to social credit scores.”