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✪ Lu Yunfeng | Department of Sociology, Peking University
✪ Zhang Chunni | Department of Sociology, Peking University
"Culture Vertical" WeChat: whzh_21bcr
Religious beliefs can reflect the social structure, social mentality and social status of believers, and are closely related to the overall degree of crisis in society. It is undeniable that China's religious people have become a huge social group. After investigation and analysis, the authors of this article believe that there are more than 26 million Christians in China. Christians have become the second largest religious group after Buddhists, but based on the secrecy of religious beliefs and other reasons, there are still many religious groups that have been "hidden", and it can be concluded that Christianity has formed a pattern of "national existence and partial settlement" and has become a social force that cannot be underestimated. Overall, Christians are relatively well organized, more loyal to their faith, and more enthusiastic about religious activities. Female Christians account for the majority of the total number of Christians in China, and the proportion of the elderly and those living in rural areas in the total number of Christians is relatively high, and they generally belong to the "vulnerable groups" of Chinese society. The rapid development of Christians has a great deal to do with the sharp division of society, and Christian doctrine and community also provide a harbor of spiritual salvation for the "sense of deprivation" group. With the diffusion of social pressure and the continued polarization of social structures, perhaps there will be a greater increase in the number of Christians.
This article was originally published in World Religions and Cultures, No. 1, 2016, and was published with the authorization of the author, which only represents the author's views and is for the consideration of the monarchs.
A glimpse of the current situation of Christianity in contemporary China:
Based on CGSS and CFPS survey data
The rapid development of Christianity in contemporary China is an indisputable social fact, but it is a matter of great importance to its scale.
This article will explore three issues based on two national social survey data, the China Comprehensive Social Survey (CGSS) and the China Household Tracking Survey (CFPS):
I. How many Christians are there in China today? This is in response to the "numbers war" over the scale of Christianity in China, where we provide a variety of possible estimation methods and results based on multi-issue survey data to find "hidden" Christians.
What are the demographic and social characteristics of Christians? This goes some way to answering whether the spread of Christianity is more widespread among people with certain characteristics.
What are the characteristics of Christians in terms of social mentality compared to believers of other religions and non-believer groups? Are Christians more positive or negative about trust, living conditions, and mentality than other groups?
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▍ Looking for "hidden" Christians: How many Christians are there in China?
Before answering the question of how many Christians there are in China, a basic reality to point out is that the vast majority of Chinese do not explicitly claim religious affiliation.
Both CGSS and CFPS show that the vast majority of respondents consider themselves "non-religious", with only slightly more than 10% of respondents considering themselves religious, with the exception of 2014 data, which showed that only slightly more than 10% of respondents considered themselves religious. Even though the CFPS 2014 survey asked questions in a god-believing manner and included the option of ancestor worship, 73.5 percent still said they didn't believe in any god or ancestor.
From the perspective of the specific belief attribution of the answer, Buddhism is the largest religious group in China, about 5.5%-7.4% of the respondents consider themselves to be Buddhists, if not strictly limited to answering religious denominations, 15.9% of the respondents answered "believe in Buddha or Bodhisattva". Christianity is the second largest religious group after Buddhism, and the proportion of adults who believe they believe in Christianity is about 1.8%-2.2%. A 2009 survey by the Institute of Religion of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences showed that 1.8 percent of respondents believed in Christianity. Six surveys independently conducted by these three different organizations reflect a fairly close proportion of Chinese Christians, with about 1.8 to 2.2 percent of respondents identifying themselves as Christians.
In addition to the legitimate "three-self" churches, there are also a large number of "house churches" in the gray area. It has been argued that some Christians are reluctant to disclose their faith status when surveyed for various reasons, so the actual size of Christians is much larger than the results of the sample survey data. This is a reasonable doubt, but there are ways we can try to checksum the survey data. Specifically, one way to infer the religious identity of the respondent is based on religious practice.
In general, Christians are required to pray weekly, so "going to church once a week and praying" can be a criterion for judging whether a respondent is a Christian. If the respondent prays almost every week and goes to a religious site, but thinks he or she has no religion, then we assume that the person is a Christian. This estimate may overestimate the size of Christians, as they may also believe in other religions (e.g., Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Mormonism, etc.). But this is at least a way for us to estimate "hidden" Christians from people who claim no religious affiliation.
The CGSS 2010 Religious Beliefs module sampled 4231 respondents who asked them, "How often do you pray now?" As well as "How often do you attend events at religious organizations or venues," respondents' actual behavior may reflect their true belief status. The data shows that of the 3,646 people surveyed by the thematic module on religious beliefs and claiming to be "not religious," 0.04 percent both "pray almost every week" and "go to religious sites every week." Let's be bold enough to count all these people as Christians. In 2010, Christians accounted for about 1.97% of China's total population. This approach may be an overestimation of the proportion of Christians, as many congregational religions have similar practice requirements. If we consider Christians to be Christians who "pray almost every week" or "attend religious organizations or places" but consider themselves to be of no religion, then 0.26% of them fall into this category, and the proportion of Christians calculated by this is about 2.18%.
Another way to discern Christians' hidden religious identity is to follow up on surveys and change the way questions are asked. This is what CFPS 2014 tried. In the CFPS 2012 questionnaire, the question about religious beliefs was expressed as follows: "What religion do you belong to?" "The options are: 1. Buddhism 2. Taoism 3. Islam (Islam) 4. Christianity (Protestantism) 5. Catholicism 6. Non-religion 77. Other (please specify). This is a direct question of religious identity attribution. But given that Chinese do not have a strong sense of institutional identity with religion, and their beliefs are likely to be organized around the gods, cfPS changed the way of asking questions to: "What do you believe?" The options are changed accordingly to: 1. Buddha, Bodhisattva 2. Taoist Immortal 3. Allah 4. Catholic God 5. Christian God 6. Ancestor 78. Some Christians may not explicitly admit their faith in Christianity, but true Christians do not deny their belief in Jesus Christ. So the 2014 data may be a more realistic reflection of the size of Christians (and adherents of other religions).
Since CFPS is a follow-up survey, and each time the same respondents were surveyed, comparing their 2012 responses to those of 2014, we can infer who are "hidden" Christians — who do not profess to believe in Christianity, but who believe in a Christian God. Of course, this does not rule out that some people may have converted to Christianity in the past two years, but judging by the magnitude of the data change, CFPS 2014 "captured" a higher proportion of believers should be brought about by improvements in the question, not by Chinese changes in beliefs.
Overall, by comparing the CFPF tracking samples answered in 2012 and 2014, we found that those who had already claimed to be Christian in 2012 did not have much impact on their answers in 2014, with 73% of Christian respondents still answering that they believed in a "Christian God" in 2014, with a high degree of consistency. As for those who claimed not to be Christians in 2012 (the vast majority of whom had no faith), 0.8% answered in 2014 that they believed in "Christian God", and this group of people is most likely "hidden" believers.
Based on the above two methods of screening "hidden believers," we have summarized several possible estimation methods and used them to estimate the size of Christians.
First, we build on 2010 CGSS data, and if we only respond to the religious identity of respondents to the CGSS 2010 questionnaire, the proportion of Christians is 1.93% (estimated 1).
If those who consider themselves unbelieving but attend religious organizations/venues and pray weekly almost every week are identified as Christians, the proportion of Christians is revised to 1.97% (estimate 2).
If we consider non-believers who pray or attend religious sites/organizations almost every week as Christians, then the proportion of Christians is further revised to 2.18% (estimate 3).
Using the CFPS 2014 tracking sample, 0.8 percent of "hidden" Christians, minus the 0.5 percent proportion of two-year inconsistencies (i.e., 2012 answers to believe in Christianity and 2014 answers to other religions or no faith), applying these proportions to CGSS's 2010-based estimates, the size of Christians is 2.2 percent (estimate 4).
In addition, we can also calculate the proportion of Christians from the CGSS and CFPS surveys from 2006 to 2014, assuming that the growth of the number of Christians is linear, and interpolate the proportion in 2010 at the average annual growth rate, according to which the proportion of Christians in 2010 is estimated to be about 2.12% (estimate 5).
Based on the above method, we estimate that the lower limit of the proportion of Christians in 2010 is 1.93%, the upper limit is 2.2%, and the corresponding estimation of the size of adult Christians is between 14.119 million and 16.143 million, and if the proportion also applies to the population under 18 years old, the size of Christians in the country is 25.683 million to 29.365 million. Since missionary work to minors is not permitted in our country, the percentage of minors should be lower than that of adults.
We therefore believe that 29.365 million Christians is the highest value we can get based on CGSS 2010 data, but this figure is at risk of overestimation for two main factors:
First, it is risky to identify non-believers who pray weekly as Christians;
Second, applying the proportion of Christians to minors in the adult population also overestimates the proportion of Christians.
If we really want to give a point estimate, we think that estimate 2 is more reasonable, that is, Christians accounted for 1.97% of the total population of our country in 2010, and the absolute number is around 26 million.
Some may argue that, for some reason, Christians have a higher rate of non-response than the general population, in which case the results of the questionnaire may underestimate the proportion of Christians. But we do not yet have rigorous and reliable evidence that Christians are more likely than people of other faiths to be absent from home, refuse to visit, be unable to answer, or not answer religion-related questionnaires when conducting household surveys. Another type of survey that would underestimate the likelihood is that Christians are unaware of or intentionally avoid acknowledging their religious identity when answering questions about their beliefs or religious affiliations. In this case, we can determine whether the respondent is a Christian by collecting actual behaviors related to religion. As we tried in estimation 2 and estimation 3.
But the religious practices asked by CGSS are not only applicable to Christians, but may also apply to other religious groups, so it is difficult to estimate exactly how many people in the self-identified non-faith population are actually Christians without more, more nuanced, and targeted measurements of Christian-related religious practices. In addition, there are certain difficulties in estimating the size of the believer population by estimating the proportions. At present, researchers (including us) often extrapolate based on the number of people in the country, but the questionnaire usually only collects religious belief data for adults aged 16 or over, and whether the proportion of Christianity in the adult population can also be applied to minors, and whether some ethnic minorities in the national population have specific beliefs (such as Hui more followers of Islam), and whether these ethnic minority groups are also appropriate in the base of the estimated size remains to be further studied.
▍ What are the characteristics of "hidden" Christians?
Although the above survey data shows that Buddhism is the largest religion in the Han region of China and Christianity ranks second, if we look at it from a more comprehensive indicator, we will find that this understanding is not comprehensive: because compared with Buddhism, Christian believers attach more importance to religious beliefs, religious practice is more frequent, and their degree of organization is higher.
In the terminology of the sociology of religion, christians have a high degree of commitment. We find that devout Christians are no less numerous than devout Buddhists. In addition, the estimate of 1.93-2.2% is a national average, while in local areas, the absolute size of Christians even exceeds that of Buddhism. In this regard, we mainly use the self-evaluation of the importance of religious beliefs collected by CFPS 2012, the density of religious practices, and whether to join religious organizations.
First, Christians place more emphasis on religious belief than Buddhists.
CfPS 2012 data show that when evaluating the importance of religion to themselves, 69% of Christians believe that religion is "important" to themselves, followed by Muslims (57%), Buddhists and Taoists have a very low proportion of religion "important" to themselves, less than 30% of Buddhists, less than one-fifth of Taoists, echoing this, nearly one-third of people who believe that Buddhism believe that faith is "unimportant", which ranks highest among religious groups. By comparison, only 5.5 percent of Christians consider religious beliefs "unimportant." This data suggests that Christians place more emphasis on their religious beliefs.
Second, Christians with a high degree of commitment are on par with devout Buddhists in absolute numbers.
Both CGSS 2010 and CFPS 2012 asked questions about the frequency with which religious believers participated in religious activities. Both surveys consistently reflect that nearly 40 percent of those who profess to be Buddhists hardly participate in religious activities ("less than once a year"), while at least 40 percent attend only once or several times a year, and only 15 to 20 percent of Buddhists are able to consistently participate at least once a month. Buddhists usually worship the Buddha on the first and fifteenth day of the first lunar month, and these 15%-20% can probably be called more devout Buddhists. In stark contrast, more than half (54 percent) of Christians insist on participating in religious activities once or several times a week, and these people can be considered highly committed Christians. Although the overall size of Buddhists is three times that of Christians, considering that the proportion of Buddhists who regularly worship The Buddha is less than one-third of the Christians who regularly go to church, it can be roughly considered that devout Christians are on a par with devout Buddhists in scale.
Third, organized Christians are even larger than organized Buddhists.
In China, people's belief in a particular religion does not necessarily mean that they will join that religious organization or group, and in this respect, Christians show a relatively high degree of organization relative to other religious groups. 1% of Christians join religious organizations and have membership in organizations; Muslims (16%) follow. By contrast, only 2.5 percent of Buddhists answered that they had joined a religious organization. Data from CFPS 2012 show that while respondents consider themselves to be Buddhists three times more than Christians, the percentage of Christians with membership is ten times greater than that of Buddhists with membership. In this sense, there are perhaps more organized Christians than organized Buddhists.
Finally, the absolute number of Christians in local areas has surpassed that of Buddhists.
CfPS has five self-representative samples of "big provinces," and Henan Province, where Christianity spreads rapidly, happens to be one of them. According to its statistics, the religious beliefs of respondents in urban and rural settlements in Henan Province are distributed. From this, we can see that the proportion of Christians in Henan is higher than the national average; secondly, in rural Henan, the proportion of respondents who claim to believe in Christianity (6.9%) has exceeded that of Buddhism (5.9%). According to this, we believe that Christianity has formed a distribution pattern of "national existence and partial settlement" in China.
In summary, leaving aside the controversy over the number of Christians, we can conclude that Christianity has become a social force to be reckoned with in our country. In terms of quantity, although we can only estimate the approximate range of its scale, it is almost an indisputable fact that the size of Christians ranks second in number after Buddhism, and Christianity has formed a pattern of "national existence and partial settlement" in China; in addition, from the degree of organization of believers, the frequency of believers' participation in religious activities, and the subjective evaluation of religious importance by believers, Christianity has become one of the most influential religions in Han areas.
▍ Demographic and social characteristics of Chinese Christians
Next, we try to answer the question of what demographic and social characteristics Christians have. In this section, we will specifically explore the demographic characteristics of Christians, such as sex ratio, age distribution, marital status, urban and rural residence, and their position or social status in social stratification. In order to highlight the characteristics of Christians, we also describe the characteristics of non-faith groups and other major faith groups (Buddhism, Taoism, Islam) in order to compare them with Christians.
In the description in this section, we mainly use CGSS 2010 data, and the types of religious beliefs asked in this survey are divided into 10 categories: Buddhism, Taoism, folk beliefs (worship of Mazu, Guan Gong, etc.), Islam/Islam, Catholicism, Christianity, Orthodoxy, other Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism. However, in the actual survey, no respondents chose Orthodox Christianity, other Christians, Judaism, or Hinduism. Among all the options, there are relatively more Buddhist, folk and Christian beliefs, while there are fewer individuals who believe in Taoism and Catholicism, less than 30 people, according to statistical common sense, too small a percentage can lead to biased statistical estimates, so we merge Taoism with folk beliefs and exclude Catholicism in the analysis sample. The final types of beliefs described include only five categories: non-faith, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist/folk beliefs, and Islam.
According to CGSS 2010 data, we found that Christians are mostly women. Worldwide, women are generally more likely to follow religion than men. But the gender gap among Chinese Christians is impressive. According to CGSS 2010, nearly 70% of Christians are women, compared to 30% of men. Female Christians are more than twice as many as male Christians, which shows that Christianity is roughly a religion with women as the main body in our country. In contrast, although there are more women than men in Islam and Buddhism, they are less women than Christians.
Christians are older. In terms of the average age of the various faith groups, the average age of Christians and Buddhists is the highest. Or another way, the population is divided into five age groups, under 30 years old (18-29 years old), 30-39 years old, 40-49 years old, 50-59 years old and 60 years old and above, according to the age structure of each faith group, we can also see: the proportion of elderly people aged 60 and above in Christianity is higher, close to 30% ; in addition to Christianity, the proportion of middle-aged and elderly people in Buddhism is also very high, and the statistical difference between the two is not significant. Compared to these two religions, the age structure of Islamists is significantly younger.
Male Christians are more likely to marry. We reduced the marital status of respondents to two categories, current marriage and non-marriage, and counted the proportion of non-married people in different faith groups by man and woman, where the non-marital status includes single, divorced and widowed. If we take the non-religious population as a reference, we see that in addition to Taoist/folk beliefs, the proportion of single, divorced and widowed female believers in religious belief groups is higher than that of non-faith groups, the highest proportion is Buddhists, nearly 23% of female Buddhists are in a single, divorced or widowed state, followed by Islam, the proportion of female Christians who are not married is close to that of non-religious women, and the difference between the two groups is not significant. However, from the perspective of the marital/non-marital status of male believers, except for Buddhists, the proportion of male believers in marriage is higher than that of non-faith men. Therefore, in terms of marital status, we did not find that the proportion of female Christians who were not married was higher than that of non-believers, but we found that the proportion of male Christians who were not married was slightly lower than that of non-believers.
The proportion of Christians living in the countryside is slightly higher. There are certain differences in the structure of religious types in different regions, with Muslims and Buddhists living in cities with a higher proportion, while Christians living in rural areas with a slightly higher proportion, with more than half of Christians living in rural areas. In addition, there are more believers living in rural areas in The Taoist/Folk Belief Group.
Next, we will describe the place that Christians occupy in the stratification of society throughout China.
Religion and social stratification have long been a topic of concern for sociologists of religion in the United States. In a sectarian American society, it is common for social class to determine religious affiliation. China's religious prosperity is not as great as in the United States, and the degree of sectarian differentiation is far less than that in the United States, and there are few related studies. The so-called three-fold Christian belief group in China (more women, more elderly, and more illiterate) involves an analysis of the relationship between religion and social stratification; discussions about cultural Christians and cultural Buddhists seem to link religious beliefs with specific social classes, but in general, systematic empirical research on Chinese religious and social stratification needs to be enriched.
The following is still using CGSS 2010 data for a preliminary analysis of the socioeconomic status of Christians and several other faith groups.
The level of education reflects the level of human capital of people in the labor market, and education is both a mechanism for the transmission of social status and a mechanism for social mobility. We not only counted the distribution of different stages of education for people of different faiths, but also calculated their average years of education. In general, the average level of education of religious groups is lower than that of non-faith groups, while christians have the lowest level of education.
According to CGSS 2010, less than 8% of Christians are highly educated, while nearly a quarter of believers are illiterate/semi-illiterate. Although the age structure of Christians is older, and the education level of China's elderly population is lower, this is not entirely due to the age structure, because as has been analyzed earlier, the age structure of Buddhists is also old, but Buddhists have the highest average education level among the four faith groups. Of course, the average level of education of Buddhists is still significantly lower than that of the non-faith group on the one hand, and on the other hand, its polarization is obvious: the proportion of Buddhists receiving higher education is significantly higher than that of other religious groups, and the illiteracy/semi-illiteracy ratio is also very high, comparable to that of Christians (the difference between the two groups is not statistically significant).
Occupational status is the most important measure of an adult's socioeconomic status in society. Generally speaking, occupation represents the most important social role of people, reflects the skills and education level that people have when they enter the labor market, determines a person's long-term social status, and is a more stable status indicator than income. At present, there are two internationally accepted measurement standards for occupational status levels, namely the International Standard Socio-Economic Status Index (ISEI) and the International Standard Occupational Prestige (SIOPS), the former is a comprehensive evaluation index of the average income and education level of practitioners in various occupations, and the latter reflects the degree of recognition and approval of occupations by the social population. The higher the score of the two indexes, the higher the status of the profession. It should be noted that for interviewees who have jobs, we choose their current occupation, and for interviewees who have left or retired, we choose their last occupation, so the occupation here can be regarded as the main occupation of the interviewee. For respondents who have never worked, we cannot know their occupation and corresponding status scores, so they will be excluded from the analysis sample. When we ranked the average occupational status of various faith groups, we found that non-faith groups had the highest professional status, followed by Buddhism, With Taoism/Folk Beliefs in the middle, while Christians and Muslims had lower average professional status.
Objective status, measured on the basis of income, educational attainment, and professional status, does not always coincide with people's subjective identification with their social status. We also analysed self-evaluations of the social status of people of various faiths. Interestingly, although non-religious people have the highest socio-economic status in objective indicators such as income, education, and professional status, their subjective status evaluation is not higher than that of religious believers. Among the groups we analyzed, Muslims rated their subjective status the most, followed by Buddhists and Taoist/folk believers, and Christians and non-believers with the lowest self-evaluation.
From the above analysis, it is not difficult to find that groups holding different beliefs not only have significant differences in demographic characteristics, but also have hierarchical characteristics in socio-economic status. Overall, the socioeconomic status of religious believers is lower than that of non-believers, and in the sample of religious believers, Christians are among the lowest in many social status indicators. It should be noted that the relative disadvantage of Christians in social position is also related to their demographic characteristics to a certain extent, that is, Christians are mostly women, middle-aged and elderly people, and rural residents.
▍Is the social mentality of Chinese Christians positive?
How does faith affect trust, fairness, happiness, and mental state? An analysis of Christian social attitudes can also be partly to evaluate the social impact of Christianity. Once again, we are using CGSS 2010 to make a preliminary exploration of these issues.
In general, Muslims, Taoist/folk belief groups have a higher level of social trust and a higher sense of fairness, and Muslims have higher confidence in the happiness of life and the future. Christianity scored low on these indicators compared to other religious groups, but did not differ significantly from non-faith groups. In other words, Christians do not manifest a higher sense of distrust, unfairness, or lower happiness, or lower expectations of the future. There is only one exception, that is, Christians have a very high level of trust in religious people, second only to Muslims in terms of trust in religious believers.
But do these results suggest that Christians are less positive? Not really. Because in general, people's subjective attitudes are related to their socio-economic status. From the objective description of socio-economic status, we can see that the general status of religious groups is inferior to that of non-faith groups, but in the evaluation of subjective status, as well as trust, sense of fairness, and happiness, Islam, Taoism and folk beliefs are higher than non-faith groups.
Although we have not found that Christians are higher than non-believers in terms of trust, sense of fairness, happiness and mental health, given that this group is generally inferior in income status and education level, its degree of trust, sense of fairness, happiness, and mental health is comparable to that of non-faith groups (not significantly worse), which shows the positive effect of religious belief on people's mentality.
To further illustrate this truth, we analyzed the relationship between socioeconomic status and a positive social mindset. We found that the relationship between the socioeconomic status of religious believers and the positive mentality was stronger than that of the non-believer population, and in the linear relationship, the slope was greater--the increase in socioeconomic status could greatly increase the positive mentality of the believers. In other words, believers are more "contented" than non-believers.
An important finding for Christians is that among believers of lower socioeconomic status, their positive mindset scores are not only higher than those of non-believers, Buddhists, and Muslims of the same status, but even higher than the average for all populations. On the other hand, Christians of the upper middle socioeconomic status also score higher on positive attitudes than non-believers and Buddhists, but second only to Muslims.
In general, believers, including those who believe in Christianity, have a more active mentality at the lower end of the social stratification and those in the upper middle position than those who do not believe, and those in the middle position tend to be in line with the non-believer group. In other words, believers at the bottom of society are more comfortable, while believers at the middle and upper levels are more content.
However, it should be pointed out that the data found above for the social stratification and social attitudes of faith groups are from the comprehensive social survey, rather than from the specific research data of religious groups, which means that although the sample is representative of the national population, it does not necessarily fully represent every religious group analyzed here, because the distribution of religious groups may have a certain regional concentration. In addition, the sample size of religious individuals is small, which also affects the stability of statistical results. Therefore, we should be very careful when interpreting the relevant conclusions.
▍ Discussion and conclusion
Through the analysis of CGSS and CFPS data, this paper preliminarily explores the development status of Christianity in China, involving the scale and pattern of Christians, population and social characteristics, and social mentality. In recent years, the number of Christians in China has become a topic of contention in academic circles. Based on data from CGSS and CFPS, we give an interval estimate of the number of Christians in China.
We used five methods to estimate the number of Christians in China in 2010, and the results show that the proportion of Christians in China's total adult population is roughly between 1.93% and 2.2%, and the corresponding estimate is that the number of adult Christians in China is about 14 million to 1600, and the total size of Christians in the country is 25.68 million to 29.36 million. If we had to give an estimate, we think there were about 26 million Christians in our country in 2010. It should be pointed out that we do not think that this estimate is absolutely correct, but a judgment that we can most accept on the basis of the available data. The search for reality is a long process, and along the way, we need to constantly accumulate data and improve measurement tools, as well as an open mind and a calm discussion.
In terms of scale, Christianity has become the second largest religion in The Han region of China in terms of number, second only to Buddhism. However, compared with Buddhism, Christian activities are more dense, more organized, and the faithful attach greater importance to religious beliefs. In some areas, such as rural Henan, Christians have outnumbered the proportion of Buddhists. Based on these data, we believe that Christianity has formed a pattern of "national existence and partial settlement" in China.
In general, Christians are a vulnerable group in Chinese society. The vast majority of them are women and middle-aged and elderly, with nearly a quarter being illiterate/semi-illiterate and more than half living in rural areas. On average, Christians have lower incomes and professional status, not only lower than non-faith groups, but also lower than other religious groups in many indicators. However, even if their socioeconomic status is lower, their level of trust, sense of fairness, happiness, and mental health is not significantly different from that of non-religious groups, and even Christians at the bottom have a more positive attitude than non-faith groups, while Christians in the upper socioeconomic status show a more contented mentality.
In Factory Workers and Preachers, Pop found a tendency among workers to regard poverty as a holy grace and to replace social status with religious status. Workers think that although their material lives are not satisfactory, they think of themselves as God's chosen people and have something that really matters: religion. Can Pop's analysis be extended to China? More detailed research awaits, waiting to come.
— Catalogue of the April issue of Culture —
▍ Feature
01. Functional Monetary Theory and the High-quality Development of China's Economy
Shi Zhengfu
▍Cover Topic: National Governance in the Age of Global Risk
02. National governance problems in the era of dual social transformation
Strong world gong
03. Reflect on industrial mobilization and industrial culture from the perspective of the "overall war" against the epidemic
Yan Peng
04. High mobility and low organization: the dual challenges of china's social crisis governance
Liu Binghui
05. How is professional governance of public health possible? ——Starting from the prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic
Cao Dongbo Ye Zihui
06. Prevention must be the mainstay: the four crises of China's disease control system and their lessons
Wang Shaoguang
▍ Historical view
07. Merchant rule – the logic of trade to war
Yin's light
▍ Worldview
08. Shaping the "New America" – the socio-historical foundation of the modern American state
Cattle can
09. What happened to the American union?
Yan Tian
▍ The development path of the late-developing countries
10. State capitalism in Morocco
Zhang Yuyou
11. A Journey to Iran: Water and Fire in Everyday Life
Huang Jingyi
▍ New National History
12. From "Yi" to "Yi": The Historical Process and Modern Enlightenment of Longyun's Identity Change
Zhao Zheng
▍ Observation
13. Dialogue among civilizations should be carried out in an open context – a reflection on cultural exchanges along the Belt and Road
Guan Shilin
This article was originally published in World Religions and Cultures, No. 1, 2016, and was originally titled "A Glimpse of the Current Situation of Christianity in Contemporary China: Based on CGSS and CFPS Survey Data". Thanks to the author for authorizing the publication. The image comes from the Internet, if there is infringement, please contact to delete. Welcome to share personally, media reprint please contact the copyright owner.