How Many Christian Are in China?

Many people are aware of the extraordinary explosion of Christianity throughout China in recent decades, with the Church now numbering in excess of 100 million members. Few, however, know how this miracle has occurred. The China Chronicles series of books is an ambitious project to document the advance of Christianity in each province of China from the time the gospel was first introduced to the present day.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many reports from the Soviet Union told of how Christian men and women were being brutally persecuted, yet the kingdom of God was growing rapidly, with many people meeting Jesus Christ. By the time the Soviet empire collapsed in the early 1990s, no one had systematically recorded the glorious deeds of the Holy Spirit during the Communist era. Tragically, the body of Christ has largely forgotten the miracles God performed in those decades behind the Iron Curtain, and we are much the poorer for it.

Consequently, we are determined to preserve a record of God's mighty acts in China, so that future generations of believers can learn about the wonderful events that have transformed tens of millions of lives there.

At the bottom of this page we have links to a detailed statistical analysis which estimates the number of Christians living in every city and county within each province of China. This is the first comprehensive survey into the number of believers in China—in every one of its more than 2,700 cities, districts and counties—in nearly a century.

Such a huge undertaking would be impossible without the cooperation and assistance of numerous organizations and individuals.

Today, the Church in China is one of the strongest in the world, both spiritually and numerically. Yet little more than a century ago China was considered one of the most difficult mission fields. The great 19th century Welsh missionary Griffith John once wrote:

"The good news is moving but very slowly. The people are as hard as steel. They are eaten up both soul and body by the world, and do not seem to feel that there can be reality in anything beyond sense. To them our doctrine is foolishness, our talk jargon. We discuss and beat them in argument. We reason them into silence and shame; but the whole effort falls upon them like showers upon a sandy desert."

How things have changed! When it is all said and done, no person in China will be able to take credit for the amazing revival that has occurred. It will be clear that this great accomplishment is the handiwork of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. We will stand in awe and declare:

"The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:23–24).

Please visit our China resources page to freely access our comprehensive resource pages where you can learn about the Church in every province of China, with maps, pictures, graphs, encouraging testimonies and stories, and links to a goldmine of data which reflects the wonderful things God has done in the world’s most populated country.