On September 11, 2007, the 50 millionth Bible rolled off the Press at Amity Printing Company (APC) in Nanjing, the capital of China's Jiangsu Province. A celebration will be held in Nanjing on December 8 to celebrate this major milestone in Bible production in China.

At the December celebration, the United Bible Societies (UBS) and Amity Foundation (AF) will sign an agreement to extend the Joint Venture Agreement between UBS and AF for a further 10 years when the current Agreement expires in June 2008. UBS and AF established the Amity Printing Company as a Joint Venture in 1988.

Ten years after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Amity Press was established in Nanjing and the first Bible came off the Press in Nanjing on October 14, 1987. Over the past 20 years, more than 50 million copies of Bibles have been printed at the Press. 42 million copies were distributed in Mainland China and 8 million copies were exported to more than 60 different countries in the world.

"What has happened to the Bible in China is a miracle," says Kua Wee Seng, UBS’s China Partnership Coordinator. "Just over 40 years ago, during the Cultural Revolution, the Bible was banned and all copies were confiscated. But today there are more Bibles than any other book in China — it is unofficially the best-selling book there. Only God can make a thing like that happen, because God works through the Chinese authorities, through the Church in China, through the Bible Societies and through each and every donor." With the Amity Press in Nanjing having printed more than 50 million Bibles over the past 20 years, it is not surprising that the Bible has become one of China’s best-selling books. Nor is it surprising that there is such a huge demand for Bibles in a country that is thought, by some, to have one of the world’s fastest-growing Christian populations. Official estimates put China’s Christian population at 22 million. Unofficially, how ever, it is thought that there could be double or even four times that number, according to Mr. Kua.

Since loosening of restrictions on religion after the 1970s, Christianity has grown significantly within the People's Republic. It is still, however, tightly controlled by government authorities. The Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the (Protestant) China Christian Council (CCC) and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), which has disavowed the Pope and is considered schismatic by other Roman Catholics, have affiliations with government and must follow the regulations imposed upon them.

There could be as many as 300 million people in China who practise one of the country’s five main religions, according to a recent poll. Although official figures put that number much lower – at 100 million – the survey, conducted among 4,500 people by professors at the East China Normal University in Shanghai, indicates that 31.4 per cent of people above the age of 16 consider themselves religious. The poll also found a significant growth of the number of Christians, who account for about 12 per cent of the country’s religious population. The China Daily news service called the poll 2007 the "country’s first major survey on religious beliefs".