(Journalist David) Aikman cites numbers: In 1949, when the People's Republic of China was established, not quite 4 million of 450 million Chinese were Christians. Today, the population is 1.3 billion; Christians are an estimated 80 million, most of them Protestants. At those rates of growth, he says, in a few decades 40 percent of the population will be Christian.

Aikman observes that there need not be a majority Christian population for Christian principles to affect China. Thirty percent or so, he says, would suffice. That is so, he explains, because Christianity has spread well beyond rural China to the biggest cities, it is a seriously held faith, and it is increasingly the faith of young people with evident prospects for societal influence, sons and daughters of prominent establishment figures including government officials.