Report on Contemporary Chinese Religions based on Data of CFPS (2012)

The report represents contemporary Chinese religion situation by the data of Chinese Family Panel Studies.With research,we found that only 10%Chinese regard themselves as religion believers,in which female,middle and old ages and people with less education takes a high percentage.And we also found that religion belief and income are irrelevant,but religion believers tend to value their economic and social status higher than their non-believer counterparts when they share the same income level,which indicates that religion belief is helpful of gaining satisfaction for the current situation.Buddhism,the believers of which is almost two times more than other religions,is still the most influential religion in China,6.75%of the interviewees regard themselves as Buddhist.Furthermore,compare with Christians,Buddhism believers tend to be younger and more educated,and take low percentage of illiterate and half-illiterate.The data indicates that 1.9%of Chinese are Christians,by calculation there are about 26 million Christians in china now,which makes Christianity the second largest religion of Han ethic.The absolute number of Christian is higher than that of Buddhist in certain area,thus we conclude that the pattern of Nation-wide Existence and Local Inhabitation has taken its shape in China.Also,Christianity is beyond Buddhism if measured by three indicators which are religion believers' systemization level,frequency of religion activity participation and subjective comments on the importance of religion belief