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CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA The People's Republic of China is situated in eastern Asia, bounded by the Pacific in the east. The third largest country in the world, next to Canada and Russia, it has an area of 9.6 million square kilometers, or one-fifteenth of the world's land mass. The population is in excess of 1.3 billion. China remained a closed country with no known Chinese Christians until the 1830’s even though it was exposed to Christianity as early as the fifth century. Westerners were only allowed into specific port cities along China's coast so the answer was to send Chinese converts into the interior of China. In 1844 Karl Gutzlaff founded an institute to train Chinese converts to be missionaries to their own land and also began translating the New Testament into the Chinese language. Englishman James Hudson Taylor, physician, language scholar and missionary founded the China Inland Mission. When he died in 1905 Taylor was credited with the founding of 200 missions manned by 800 missionaries influencing 125,000 Chinese converts. In addition, Taylor spent 5 years translating the New Testament of the Bible into the Ningpo dialect. A BBC report issued in 2004 records that Christianity is not actually banned in China. In fact, according to the constitution, "citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief". But human rights groups and Christians say that the reality is different. "They say you can believe, but you can't evangelise," a Bible believer said. "But that is a natural act for Christians. The Bible commands us to preach the gospel." Currently there is a link on www.chinatoday.com displaying the following article: “After months of rumours that the Chinese authorities would ban Bibles during the Beijing Olympics, it may now be taken as gospel that Christians will be free to practise their religion during the Games. A British-based Christian charity has confirmed that 50,000 special bilingual booklets containing the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John will be made available in the Athletes' Village in Beijing and five other Olympic cities. Ten thousand Bibles and 30,000 New Testaments will also be printed.
It is the first time that Bibles have been distributed freely in China outside registered shops and with the full blessing of the Communist Party. Far from suppressing their distribution, the Beijing Olympic organising committee (Bocog) is putting its official stamp on the initiative by allowing the free use of its logo on the Scriptures.” It is a joy to know that KYB studies are being translated and two are already being used in China. Below is an extract from Mark Part 1 in Mandarin:
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