Just how many Christians – and Communists – are there in China, anyway?

Some Church scholars in Hong Kong doubt recent claims that Chinese Christians outnumber members of the Communist Party, but assert that China is deeply concerned about ever-increasing religious influences.

The American Bible Society at the end of August launched a special fundraising project to help provide paper to produce Bibles for distribution throughout China during 2005 through Amity Press, the officially recognised Christian printing press of the registered church. The Society said that "only the lack of Bible paper holds us back".

And in his book "Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power", David Aikman, a former senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine writes that out of China’s 1.3 billion citizens, 70 million are Protestant and 12 million are Catholics, and he believed that Christianity will continue to grow in China.

In Hong Kong, Professor Ying Fuk Tsang, a divinity professor, said the number of Protestants in mainland China could definitely be more than 14 million – the number provided by official sources without counting believers in unregistered groups known as house churches. Yet he has reservations about reports which said Christians in China outnumber members of the Communist Party, which tally about 70 million.