From Christian villages on the outskirts of eastern Wenzhou to China's rambling border with Burma, where Buddha is king, belief is a growth industry. Since the Communist Party swept to power in 1949, the official number of China's faithful has leapt tenfold. And despite increasingly strict monitoring of religious activity, the growth trend continues. When Mao Zedong's rag-tag Red Army rolled into Beijing, China was home to only 700,000 Protestants and fewer than three million Roman Catholics. The ministerial-level Religious Affairs Bureau now records at least 10 million Protestants and four million Catholics.
Religious experts estimate double that number meet regularly for unofficial prayer services.
China's sprawling rural northwest is also populated by 18 million Muslims, and tens of millions of Buddhists worship at official temples scattered across the country. But the surge is strongest outside the official churches and state-run temples, where a powerful cocktail of orthodox religion, ancestor worship and superstition feeds the rural need to believe. Before it was just the elderly who came to service, but now even the young come for a prayer. China launched a crackdown on the sect last year, calling it the country's largest cult and arresting 20 members of the congregation in the central province of Hunan. The outcome of the case has not been made public, but in rural Wenzhou, the sect remains a top draw.