What do religious Chinese people believe in nowadays?
China is a country with a great diversity of religious beliefs. As the communication developed during the long history of China, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism have become some main religion for modern Chinese people. • Buddhism has a history of 2,000 years in China. Currently China has 13,000-some Buddhist temples and about 200,000 Buddhist monks and nuns. Among them are 120,000 lamas and nuns, more than 1,700 Living Buddhas, and 3,000-some temples of Tibetan Buddhism and nearly 10,000 Bhiksus and senior monks and more than 1,600 temples of Pali Buddhism. • Islam was introduced into China in the seventh century. Nowadays in China there are ten national minorities, including the Hui and Uygur, with a total population of 18 million, whose faith is Islam. Their 30,000-odd mosques are served by 40,000 Imams and Akhunds. • Catholicism was introduced into China intermittently in the seventh century, but it had not spread widely until after the Opium War in 1840. At present,
