If 7 percent of a country's total population reads the Bible, one might see this as a relatively low number—unless the population of that country is 1.3 billion. In China, approximately 90 million people read the Bible. Yet, because of the many restrictions imposed by the Chinese government, only half this number actually have a copy to call their own. An additional difficulty is that there are over 200 languages and dialects in China. This makes standardizing a Bible translation virtually impossible.
Challenges aside, a number of nonprofit organizations have been shipping Bibles to China over the years. The Bible League, for example, has sent more than 5 million copies since 1979.
But sending Bibles from an outside country into China is no longer the only means of ensuring that there are enough Bibles to go around. Some organizations fund the printing of the Bible on Chinese soil. The Amity Printing Company, funded by the United Bible Societies, is China's largest center for Bible-printing. And a program jointly funded by the American Bible Society and Trinity College in Singapore trains pupils, including some from China, to translate the Bible into many of the country's languages and dialects.
