China Wants to Control Churches

When considering the latest outbreak of persecution against Christians in China, what you have to understand is that there are already thought to be more Christians there (some 100 million) than members of the Communist party (87 million). This is not an impressive outcome for 70 years of intermittently ferocious atheist suppression of religion: when the Communists seized power in 1947, there were only around 4 million Christians in the country. Under Mao, an estimated 500,000 Christians died for – or because of – their faith. Yet since the Maoist state was opened to capitalism in the 1980s, Christianity, along with other religions, has grown at an astonishing rate.