China Religious Institutions Growing

Three decades ago, China's Cultural Revolution saw some of the most dramatic restrictions on the practice of religion ever seen in the modern world.

But today's communist rulers have radically altered their views about religion and have granted substantial freedom to Christians prepared to worship within state-sanctioned churches.

Within these boundaries, Christianity is growing in China as never before - and doing so supported by millions of dollars of government funding.

The BBC has been given unprecedented access to China's state-sanctioned Protestant and Catholic churches, to examine why the government seems so keen to invest in religion.

State funding
On the outskirts of Nanjing, a building site illustrates the scale of the communist state's commitment to supporting the development of Christianity.

Local officials say that the building under construction will become China's largest state-sanctioned church - with space for 5,000 worshippers.

The land - and 20% of the building costs - are being provided not by local Christians, but by the municipal government.

It represents state financial support worth millions of dollars - just one example of the strategy to encourage the development of religion in China.The Communist Party's senior official with responsibility for this policy is the director general of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, Wang Zuo An.

In a rare interview, he told me that there are now at least 20m Protestant Christians in China worshipping in the state-sanctioned church.

"Such growth is unprecedented in the history of Christianity in China. Christianity is enjoying its best period of growth in China," he said.

And he explained why the Chinese state is investing in religious faith - support which has included funding the construction of national Protestant and Catholic seminaries educating hundreds of future Christian leaders each year.

"Our goal in supporting these religions in developing religious education is that we hope they can train qualified clergy members so that their religions can enjoy better development."

But there is no small irony in the party's new-found enthusiasm for supporting the development of religion in China, given Communism's commitment to atheism.

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"On the question of whether there is God, the Chinese Communist Party believes there is no God in the world," said Mr Wang.

"The Communist Party believes that it should respect and protect religious belief. The members of the party must respect religious followers and not infringe their interests."

He insists that there is no contradiction between the Communist Party insisting that its own members are non-religious, and the communist government's commitment to investing in religious development.

"We are making laws and regulations to better guarantee religious belief in China," he says.