China to have the largest Christian population in the world by 2030?

China will have the largest population of Christians by 2030, based on a new statistical forecast. An expert in religious trends for OMF International has now said that despite persecution in their homeland, Christians in China are increasing dramatically.

In an interview with Christian Post, Rodney Pennington, who studies religious trends for OMF International, says that despite persecutions, Christians in China are increasing dramatically in numbers. By 2030, he said the nation will have the highest number of Evangelical Christians in the world.

"That [increase] will greatly shape the global evangelical Church in the coming years," says Pennington, adding, "While 200 million Chinese believers by the year 2030 may seem ambitious, it certainly gives us a strong goal to pray toward."

According to Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology and the director of the Center of Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University, in his essay for Slate Magazine, amid the rapid economic rise, Chinese people are searching for spiritual comfort.

When Chairman Mao Zedong died, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allowed a few religions in its nation, including Christianity. The government, however, imposed strict control. In 1949, less than a million were Christians in a country with a population of 500 million people. In 2010, there were about 23 million Christian-converts in China, which has more than a billion people in its population.

Based on Yang's calculation, the average annual growth rate of Christians in China from 1950 to 2010, was seven percent (from one million in 1950 to 58 million in 2010). With this projection, Chinese Christians are seen to reach 160 million in population by 2025. In 2032, with over a billion in population, there will be an estimated 257 million Christians in the country.

In an essay for firstthings.com, Yu Jie, a Chinese Christian and democracy activist, claimed that an internal government document obtained by The New York Times in May 2014 revealed that the government's objective is to demolish churches as part of a larger campaign to restrain the influence of Christianity on the Chinese people. This strategy serves futile, as many Chinese people are in search of spiritual peace.

"Chinese Christians have refused to give in. One of the phrases I have heard most often among them is: 'the greater the persecution, the greater the revival,'" says Yu Jie.