The growth of Christianity in China may be stagnating.

Despite years of being the country with the largest Christian population in the world (also in demographic terms), this trend could be reversed, according to some organisations and entities.

According to the American think tank Pew Research, although some journalists, academics and Christian-inspired organisations insist that Christianity continues to grow in China and that there is a projection that the majority of the population will identify with this religion in 2050, data from the China General Social Survey (CGSS) point in another direction.

Between 2010 and 2018, the CGSS consistently collected data that around 2% of the Chinese population formally identified with Christianity, of which 90% claimed to be Protestant.

Although some suggested that the pandemic had increased rates of religiosity among the Chinese, the survey researchers re-collected data in 2021 and found that only 1% of respondents claimed to be Christian, down from 2% in previous editions.

“It’s important to note that the 2021 survey data is not directly comparable to earlier waves because COVID-19 outbreaks in some regions of China made it impossible to achieve the same coverage as in pre-pandemic waves”,explains Pew Research.

Data variation

It is difficult to find a single overall data on the state of Christianity in China.

For example, in 2018, the survey conducted by the China Family Studies Panel showed that up to 3% of respondents said they believed exclusively in the Christian God, while 4% believed in another non-Christian deity in addition to the same God of Christianity.

The Open Doors organisation, which monitors the state of religious freedom for Christians around the world, estimates that there are about 96.7 million Christians in China, equivalent to just under 7 % of the total demographic.

Also, ten years ago, Fung Yang, professor of sociology at Purdue University, published Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule, where he stated that China would become the country with the most Christians in the world, and that by 2030 Chinese Christianity would represent 247 million people, surpassing countries with a Christian tradition such as Mexico, Brazil and the United States.

Reasons for a possible decline

The first reason that could explain the possible decline of Christianity in China is the increasing intensity with which the government controls all religious groups.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has asked the White House to consider the Asian giant as a “country of particular concern for engaging in systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom as defined by international law”.

Furthermore, in their latest report, analysing what happened in 2022, they said that conditions of religious freedom in China have “deteriorated”.

Although Beijing renewed its bilateral agreement with the Vatican at the end of 2022 for two more years, which mainly has to do with the appointment of bishops in the country, the Chinese government continued to control the country's domestic churches as well as the presence of symbols of the Chinese Communist Party in churches.

That control has also affected the virtual sphere, censoring the distribution of preaching and Christian material on the internet without prior permission from the government.

Pew Research also stresses the “ageing” of the Christian population in China, and points to measures such as a ban on religious education and activities for children, which prevents passing on Christian identity to the next generation.