Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, and by midcentury, the People’s Republic of China may be home to the world’s second largest concentration of Christians — a prospect that holds serious political implications for the entire world.
“China may be for the 21st century what Europe was during the [eighth and 11th] centuries, and America has been during the past 200 years: the natural ground for mass evangelization,” wrote “Spengler,” a columnist for Asia Times, an online publication, Aug. 7.
111 million strong
“If this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to recognize it. Islam might defeat the western Europeans, simply by replacing their diminishing numbers with immigrants, but it will crumble beneath the challenge from the East,” Spengler wrote.
The World Christian Database at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary estimates the number of Chinese Christians at 111 million — an increase of approximately 4,300 percent in the past 50 years.
On top of that, Spengler noted 400 million Chinese “have moved from poverty to affluence in a single generation, and 10 million to 15 million new migrants come from the countryside each year, the greatest movement of people in history.”
China’s “house church” movements now minister to as many as 100 million Christians, Spengler noted: “This quasi-underground movement may now exceed in adherents the 75 million members of the Chinese Communist Party; in a generation it will be the most powerful force in the country.”
As China’s economic and political influence grows, the current growth of Christianity, Islam and other religions in the country could significantly affect the role it plays in the global balance of power, said John Allen, a correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.
“How things shake out religiously, therefore, is of tremendous strategic importance,” Allen wrote Aug. 3.
‘Of strategic importance’
“If Christianity ends up at around 20 percent of the population, for example, China could become an exponentially larger version of South Korea … a more democratic, rule-oriented, basically pro-Western society. On the other hand, if dynamic Muslim movements create an Islamic enclave in the western half of the country, with financial and ideological ties to fundamentalist Wahhabi forms of Islam in Saudi Arabia, at least that part of China could become a wealthier and more influential Afghanistan.
“If growing religious pluralism in China becomes fractious, it could mean that a well-armed and wealthy superpower is destabilized by internal conflict, posing risks to global peace and security.” (BP)
Share with others: