page_title: Censorship of the Bible
section_title: China
hierarchical_section_title: Censorship of the Bible / 19th–20th centuries / China
caption_attribution_description: Bân-lâm-gú: zh-min-nan:Âng-phôe Sèng-keng tē 571 bīn. Chok-chía: A-giâu hip--ê (2004). Chit pún chhin-chhiūⁿ sī āu--lâi (thau?) hoan-ìn--ê. Sú-iōng hí-khó-su: chit tiuⁿ siòng sī zh-min-nan:GFDL. zh-min-nan:Âng-phôe Sèng-keng pún-sin ê pán-koân bô khak-tēng.
context_page_description: Censorship of the Bible includes restrictions and prohibition of possessing, reading, or using the Bible in general or any particular translation of it. Violators of so-called "Bible bans" have been punished by killing, imprisonment, forced labor, and banishment, as well as by burning or confiscating the Bible or Bibles used or distributed. Censorship of the Bible occurred in historical times and is still going on today.
  The Index Librorum Prohibitorum of the Catholic Church included various translations of the Bible. In most cases, the bans on pious lay people possessing or using Bibles were related to vernacular Bible editions. Clerics were never forbidden to possess the Vulgate Bible translation in the Latin language.
  From the point of view of Protestantism, the topic mostly refers to historical provisions of the Catholic Church against reading or possessing Bibles not of the Latin Vulgate translation, or in the case of the laity, possessing any Bibles at all, including the Vulgate. From a Catholic point of view, one rarely speaks of Bible bans, because in their view the attempts by the hierarchy to prevent opposing biblical interpretations were justified.
context_section_description: When the economic reforms implemented by Deng Xiaoping created greater openness to the West, Christians of various affiliations began smuggling Bibles and Christian literature into China. The CCP viewed the recipients of those Bibles as engaging in illegal activity in violation of the principle of not accepting aid from Western sources.
caption: The 1973 Ko-Tân Colloquial Taiwanese Version New Testament, confiscated in 1975. It is open to Acts 2:14–17
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