The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
Vol. 13, No. 4, August 2012, pp. 398-410

Christianity, especially evangelical Protestant Christianity, has undergone a remarkably
rapid growth in the last generation in China. Although numbers are in dispute,
it seems likely that there are at least fifty million Protestant Christians in China today,
remarkable because prior to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China
in 1949, there were less than one million. Because of the political difficulties of
studying this burgeoning population, we have had almost no in-depth ethnographic
studies of Chinese Christian communities. Now in Nanlai Cao’s book we have an
excellent one.
There are many of different kinds of Christians in China today, flourishing in
different social strata and geographical regions and enjoying different degrees of
acceptance by the Chinese state. A common stereotype in the West is that the most
dynamically growing segment of the Christian population is poor, rural, female, and
Pentecostal. This may have been true at one phase of Christian development in the
past thirty years, but Cao’s ethnography shows that it is not true today. The ‘China’s
Jerusalem’ that he studies is Wenzhou, where the leaders of an extremely rapidly
growing Christian community are wealthy, urban, and male*the newly rich
entrepreneurs who have made Wenzhou into the most dynamic commercial economy
in China. They prefer a ‘rational’ form of Christianity, leaving the ‘emotional’ forms
to the women in their congregations. Their churches are not registered with the
officially sanctioned Three Self Protestant Movement, but they have usually gained
the tolerance of local officials.
Wenzhou is a special place, protected by its geography from an excessive reach
of the state for most of the history of the People’s Republic of China. Combined with
the global connections of itinerant Wenzhou people, this relative insulation from the
state has allowed Wenzhou to be an extraordinary incubator of commercial
enterprise. But why are so many of its entrepreneurs attracted to Christianity?
According to Cao, they see their faith as ‘modern, progressive, and productive’
(p. 33). Their model of modernity is Western society, which they think has gained its
ascendency because of its ‘Protestant ethic.’ To be truly modern therefore is to take
on Christianity. And because of their Christian zeal, they can be even more modern
than the West, which has been losing the devotion that made it strong. Thus, the role
of the New Jerusalem has been passed to Wenzhou in particular and China in general.
Since Wenzhou’s predominant churches, along with their pastors, are paid for by
businessmen, the ‘Wenzhou model’ (or as the businessmen sometimes call it, the
‘Wenzhou brand’) of Christianity is conceived in commercial terms. It preaches
a ‘Gospel of Prosperity’ that celebrates and legitimises entrepreneurial success. Many
of its churches are financed through leveraged investments. There is a love of
big worship spaces and flashy celebrations for festivals like Christmas, but there is
also a constant breaking off from established churches to create new start-up
congregations. Like Wenzhou’s manufacturers, they try to imitate Western forms of
church building, but produce them faster and cheaper than can now be done in the
West.