lighthouse
12-19-2007, 07:41 AM
As the book business goes, Amity Printing is not unusually prolific. In the last 20 years it has printed some 50 million books; some publishers churn out that many in a year. But Amity focuses on one title — the Bible — and primarily one market, China. It is the largest printer of Christian literature in the officially atheist country, where freedom of religion remains weak; up until 1979, when Deng Xiaoping began undoing the social strictures of the Mao Zedong era, the mere possession of a Bible could get a person into serious trouble.
Amity has churned out 41 million Bibles for Chinese believers at its plant outside the southern city of Nanjing, including more than 3 million copies last year. (About nine million copies have been exported to Africa, other parts of Asia and Central Europe.) For a country whose religious oppression tends to make more international headlines than its exhibitions of tolerance, that stands as a significant achievement.
A poll early this year by East China Normal University in Shanghai of 4,500 Chinese found that 31.4% considered themselves religious, a proportion that suggests 300 million Chinese believers; of the religious respondents, Christians represented 12%, or 40 million nationwide. Demand has grown to the point that the foundation plans to open a new, 515,000-square-foot (48,000 sq. m.) printing plant next year, which will allow Amity to turn out more than a million books a month. It's thought to be one of the largest Bible production facilities in the world.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1695279,00.html
Amity has churned out 41 million Bibles for Chinese believers at its plant outside the southern city of Nanjing, including more than 3 million copies last year. (About nine million copies have been exported to Africa, other parts of Asia and Central Europe.) For a country whose religious oppression tends to make more international headlines than its exhibitions of tolerance, that stands as a significant achievement.
A poll early this year by East China Normal University in Shanghai of 4,500 Chinese found that 31.4% considered themselves religious, a proportion that suggests 300 million Chinese believers; of the religious respondents, Christians represented 12%, or 40 million nationwide. Demand has grown to the point that the foundation plans to open a new, 515,000-square-foot (48,000 sq. m.) printing plant next year, which will allow Amity to turn out more than a million books a month. It's thought to be one of the largest Bible production facilities in the world.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1695279,00.html