It is impossible to say how many Christians there are in China today, but no-one denies the numbers are exploding.
The government says 25 million, 18 million Protestants and six million Catholics. Independent estimates all agree this is a vast underestimate. A conservative figure is 60 million. There are already more Chinese at church on a Sunday than in the whole of Europe.
...writes Tim Gardam for the BBC (emphasis mine).
When I am not with my fellow Anglo-Saxon Protestant brethren, I attend mass in Paris's Chinatown--at Notre Dame de Chine (Our Lady of China), located just down the street from the Parisian Chinatown McDonald's (don't you just love multiculturalism?). So I have a unique perspective on this issue.
Most French churches are empty on Sunday. However, you will find immigrants, old people, and, in certain bourgeois neighborhoods, the traditionally large white French Catholic family. At Notre Dame de Chine you see a mix of those groups, but, given that it is Chinatown and not terribly bourgeois at that, Asian Catholics outnumber the others.
Say what you will about communism, but at least it didn't worship wealth and success as the greatest good. Right now, as Western-style consumerism and materialism invade China and replace the ethos of communism, Chinese leaders are struggling to cope with the societal effects. As a result some leaders are turning to the burgeoning Christian movement in order to achieve the new Chinese value of the harmonious society.
Most French people struggle to understand this. The secularized Christian tradition that they have inherited still partially restrains the type of consumerism now blossoming in cultures with much different histories. Almost all white Europeans that I know have not quite come to terms with this unwieldy fact. Despite the many European ideas, institutions, and inventions that will persist into the future, the world will not become Europe writ large. The future will be non-white, non-European, and non-secular.
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