Religion is so popular in China in part because of the great ideological changes in the country. Over the last century or so it has gone from Confucianism to Su

Religion is so popular in China in part because of the great ideological changes in the country. Over the last century or so it has gone from Confucianism to Sun Yet Sen's Christian social democracy to Maoism to Deng Xiaoping's moderate capitalist socialism to Xi Jin Ping's new authoritarianism. The result of all these swerves is that a large part of the population has lost any ideological belief in the government, and looks for meaning and guidance elsewhere. And when it comes to this Christianity presents a particular threat to the government. Besides being associated with the West, it is universalistic, as the article says. All people are children of the one God, so they all have rights and the right to criticize the government, and the Chinese government also has no right to try to imperialistically dominate the world. You know, when a government engages in this sort of suppression, it likes to say it is because it is so strong, but actually it usually means it is in a panic over lack of support by the population.