Evangelism Report Sample 2013: Fill & Download for Free

Sigh.First things first. Let's examine the premise of the question, because the idea that retail stores are becoming irrelevant is just wrong.A few quick stats on that point:The NYT reported a 27% increase in the number of independent bookstores in the US during 2009-2014, when anyone who was anyone was pointing out how Amazon killed Borders and was going to kill everything else in the book business (and the rest of the world, too).A.T. Kearney has a great white paper that points out that retail is still the cornerstone of omnichannel marketing, pointing out things like 95% of commerce is still store related, a 6% CAGR in store investments from 2011-2013, and a treasure trove of data that shows that people in all age groups like using stores for a variety of reasons. I discuss this study in a lot more detail in this answer.In that same answer, I also pointed out that this Nielsen study says 57% of consumers actually think going to the grocery store is 'fun' (and I disagree with this sentiment wholeheartedly).Even Wal-Mart, which is investing heavily in online channels, planned on expanding their store footprint in 2015 (no report yet on how much they did), and that growth was in the US:So, please, let's stop pretending that there is a near-term, imminent demise in retail. Retail is being challenged - a lot - and online retailers are making huge inroads. But, right now, even with the explosive growth in companies like Amazon, bricks and mortar still rules the roost. I'm not saying that retail will stay around forever, or will stay in its current format - and I definitely don't want to invest money in my local mall - but the reports of the demise of bricks and mortar retail have been greatly exaggerated.That said, there are lots of ways that retailers are already using technology to improve how they relate to customers. One example I love is how Room&Board uses their online store to sell accessories as add-ons to the in-store pickup of furniture, resulting in a crazy 16% increase in average order value. They did this in part by eliminating territoriality - they let store managers get credit for online sales within 100 miles of their store. I think that this is a really cool use of technology combined with a store footprint.There are the stories of the online-only retailers starting stores, like Warby Parker. They've realized that their home try-on program wasn't enough for many customers. People just like going to stores to try stuff on.Anyway, back to the question - what will help retail stores stay relevant?Certainly, there's the convergence between digital and retail, like what Room&Board does, or like what every store that offers in-store pick-up of products ordered online does (e.g., Best Buy), or there's the massive amount of promotions that companies run on Facebook / Twitter / now Snapchat to encourage you to spend money with them.Those things are great. But none of those things really change the game for retailers. Those are all just ways of staying above water. As soon as you have a successful strategy, everyone else copies it and it ceases to be all that successful anymore. It's sad, but that's just retail. Actually, I guess that's all business.So what would make a difference?How about an extra revenue stream based on your existing operations?On the rare occasions I want Cheetos, I want Cheetos. I don't want Cheez Doodles. No offense to those of you who love Cheez Doodles; I'm just not one of those people. I don't really love Cheetos, either - there are just times when I really, really want one.Retailers who stock Cheetos are the ones that I'll go to. There used to be two delis by my office - one sold Cheetos, and one didn't. I started only going to the one that did, because I liked the option value of being able to buy Cheetos (even though most days, I wouldn't). The other deli doesn't exist anymore, but I'm pretty sure it was a landlord dispute and not my lack of patronage that drove that.The good people at Frito Lay, manufacturer of Cheetos, don't know much about me. I'd have to go out of my way and become their Facebook fan to self-identify as someone who occasionally eats one of their products. And, as a reward for that, I'd get barraged with marketing content until the end of time. Other than that, they might have me as a 'persona,' which is how they view large cohorts of people with supposedly similar reasons for buying their product.Most manufacturers have no idea - literally, NO IDEA - how their products sell in stores. Who buys it, why, and when.Orders are made in regular intervals, and there's usually no real reporting back to the manufacturer about the sales of their product. They'll see a lift in sales and assume that they're doing well, or a drop and assume that they underperformed, but there's precious little real-time data.Manufacturers get around this by trying to get access to POS (point-of-sale) data, but retailers are loathe to give any of them full access. Focus groups, secret shoppers, and many other strategies start to get you there, but never give you a full picture.All of their techniques end up being large-scale statistical sampling exercises, and, as Mark Twain pointed out (referencing Benjamin Disraeli):'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."Statistics are a really good when you're not sure who you're selling to. It's nice to have a persona that you use in selling to describe what your customers like.But I'd rather sell to a person.And I actually want to sell to the person that is an evangelist for my products - the one who won't shut up about them. Those are the people who are the cornerstone of my business.Manufacturers could pay retailers to put stuff on their shelves based on an auction of the data of people who normally go into that store.This is creepy, big-brother stuff, and some of it already happens. But it's not that widespread (at least in my experience), because, generally, retailers don't trust most manufacturers, and vice versa.My earlier example was about me eating Cheetos. And I referenced that I know of one other competitor, Cheez Doodles. I'm sure that there are others.Let's say that you're the benign corporate overlord for Cheez Doodles, and you've run a couple studies that indicate three things to you:People like your product more than the competition;When your product is available and the competitor's isn't, you have about a 35% probability of a sale (with the remaining 65% going to, I don't know, Doritos); andYour sell-through goes up to 65% from 35% when other people see people buying my product (because of the power of social proof).As a smart manager, you're going to test these hypotheses in the wild, and you're going to do it by offering a massive discount to retailers to stock your stuff, and a further massive discount to any of them willing to drop the competitor.But that stinks. It's hard to pull off, you're reliant on local salespeople / distributors, and, having worked on just these types of operations, I can guarantee you that you're going to get no good data.Major supermarkets already run a sort-of auction with really asymmetrical, imperfect data. It's a way that supermarkets help make money. It's called 'slotting fees,' and they basically charge you for shelf space.But small retailers don't do this. They don't have the power to show manufacturers that they have some of that manufacturer's best customers coming in because there's no two-way data flow. Instead, they buy product for their stores based on personal tastes and past sales, and it's basically a black box for manufacturers. A really, really big black box.Back to Cheez Doodles. Let's say that there's a guy named Bob, and Bob travels around a lot for work. My deli is one of five that Bob frequents. Bob LOVES Cheez Doodles. He buys them everywhere but my deli.If I know, as a manufacturer, that Bob comes into my deli on Thursdays, would I pay a bounty to make sure that there's a display of Cheez Doodles there that day? Yes, I would. I'd be able to rely on Bob grabbing a bag, and see if I can sell out a display. I could easily test my hypotheses, and roll it out in a scalable, manageable way, and I'd make one of my evangelists happy (ok, getting all the small distributors for my product to work together on this is like herding cats, but it's doable). Bob's presence might even convince me to try Cheez Doodles instead of Cheetos. I'm not that loyal to them.In reality, there are lots of Bobs in the world. And manufacturers know full well that you've got to harness those people with high net promoter scores (which, in non-marketing speak, is just people who evangelize your product). So they'll compete, and they'll pay - because for every Bob, there's a Jim who likes the competition. And retailers will end up with a secondary revenue stream that will help them actually thrive.This is good for retailers, because it's an extra source of income - they're selling customer data directly to manufacturers, and generating revenue from that in addition to the revenue that they get from selling directly to consumers.This is good for manufacturers, because they're getting access to data that they've never had before, and they'll be able to make micro-adjustments.I think it's actually good for customers, too, because having a retailer pay attention to the things that they like and don't like on a micro-level should lead to better customer service, hospitality, and all of the other things that can make going into a store such a pleasant experience in the first place. Bob is certainly going to be happier about the availability of Cheez Doodles (and, even if that promotion ends, the smart retailer might keep a bag or two behind the counter for Bob).This is what Facebook does with all of our data already. They do it based on your likes, shares and clicks.I'm suggesting that it should be based on real purchasing behavior, and that retailers should take advantage of their massive foot-traffic advantage to get paid to market to their existing customers.There are companies out there that do gather some of this data - such as Cardlytics - but it's still not on the micro-level I'm talking about. Which is, I admit, really, really creepy.Thanks, Sabrina & Tuan for the A2A.

Because it is a fake news spread by China-hating Anglo-American media (the US, which want to spread worldwide their crass, degenerate, anomic type of society based on money and brute matter, the product of the psychotic antisocial pseudo-religion called Christianity). The Chinese are not the Koreans, two completely different ethnicities with different histories and cultures, among whom the latter (the Koreans) have been Christianised by pro-American regimes throughout the 20th century.It is a hoax well-orchestrated by the Anglo-American media. All the tales about the growth of Christianity in China are vicious fake news spread by the evangelical Christian lobby in America, mostly as part of campaigns of yellow journalism, i.e. deliberately fabricated fake news, exaggerations and sensationalism meant to overawe the foe—China in this case—and bend public opinion against it. These anonymous questions on Quora may be part of the same campaign, carried on by bots. I have been following these lines of propaganda for years and I have been able to trace them back to some American so-called “think tanks” and missionary organisations.Images credit: Thorsten J. Pattberg, a German Confucian philosopher who works at the Peking University. His website: PATTBERG.ORGTHE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN HOAXERS FROM AMERICAThese fake news are spread through the Anglo-American media by evangelical Christian organisations such as the John Templeton Foundation and many others, and by scholars who are financed by them.The scholar who has been the main propagator of this type of information in recent years is the Chinese American Christian Fenggang Yang.We read: <<Fenggang Yang is openly Christian and his theories have been criticized as biased in favor of Christianity by many other scholars of Chinese religion. […] The Center on Religion and Chinese Society is funded by the Templeton Foundation, an American organization criticized for promoting Christian-biased research in the field of religious studies. Fenggang Yang was granted $9.5 million by the Templeton Foundation to develop his projects. His statistics and projections about Christianity in China have been disputed by authorities in China and scholars including Shen Guiping. In 2014 he claimed that "China will be home to the world's largest Christian congregation by 2030", despite in 2010 he said that "Christians remain a small minority in China today", based on a survey which found that they were "33 million, much less than most of the popular speculations". Surveys conducted in 2014 by Chinese research institutes found a similar number of Christians, or around 2% of the population. The 2014 claim was, as proclaimed by Yang himself, "based on the Pew Research Center's report of Global Christianity", another project backed by the Templeton Foundation.>>From reliable sources (the excerpts are from the Wikipedia article about “Religion in China”), we also know that:<<André Laliberté noted that despite there having been much talk about "persecution against religion (especially Christianity) in China", one should not jump to hasty conclusions, since "a large proportion of the population worship, pray, perform rituals and hold certain beliefs with the full support of the Party. Most of this activity affects people who subscribe to world views that are sometimes formally acknowledged by the state and are institutionalised, or others that are tacitly approved as customs". In this context, Christianity not only represents a small proportion of the population, but its adherents are still seen by the majority who observe traditional rituals as followers of a foreign religion that sets them apart from the body of society.>>Laliberté, André (2011). “Religion and the State in China: The Limits of Institutionalization”. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs. 40 (2): 3–15.From an academic article criticising Rodney Stark’s book A Star in the East, which is published by the Templeton Foundation, we know that:<<There has been much speculation by some Western authors about the number of Christians in China. Chris White, in a 2017 work for the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity of the Max Planck Society, criticises the data and narratives put forward by these authors. He notices that these authors work in the wake of a "Western evangelical bias" reflected in the coverage carried forward by popular media, especially in the United States, which rely upon a "considerable romanticisation" of Chinese Christians. Their data are mostly ungrounded or manipulated through undue interpretations, as "survey results do not support the authors' assertions".>>White, Chris (2017). “Counting Christians in China: A critical reading of Rodney Stark’s A star in the East: The rise of Christianity in China”. MMG Working Paper 17-03. Göttingen: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. ISSN 2192-2357.These are the results of scientific surveys conducted by the Chinese Family Panel Studies in 2012 and 2014:As you can see, the identification with Buddhism has seen a big increase in 2014 (due to the change in survey methodologies which allowed for a better estimation of religious populations outside the state-sanctioned religious institutions). Protestantism and Catholicism are, instead, static.The following table shows the distribution of religions by age group according to the CFPS 2012. As you can see, Christianity, while being a small minority in all age groups, is more popular among the elderly (2.9%), while decreases among the youth (1.5%). So, Christianity in China is not growing at all; actually, it is declining among the younger generations of Chinese.Source for the data: Wenzel-Teuber, Katharina (2017). “Statistics on Religions and Churches in the People’s Republic of China”. Religions & Christianity in Today's China. (VII) 2: 26-53. China Zentrum e.V. ISSN: 2192-9289.THE PROBLEM OF FAKE AND MISLEADING MAPSYang is also the author and spreader of the following fake map of religion in China. The map has been misrepresented by Reuters and Business Insider as showing the “largest religion by county”, while according to the original from the Purdue University’s CRCS it shows the “religion with the largest number of registered places of worship by county”. Considering that Christian churches and Islamic mosques are mandatorily registered and monitored by the state, while most Buddhist and Taoist temples are not registered, and all Confucian and folk religious temples are not registered (and are the most numerous, between 1 and 2 million temples compared to the few tens of thousands places of worship of the registered religions [Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Taoism]), the map is utterly misleading and made up to show Christianity and Islam as majority in certain areas, by excluding Confucianism and folk religion, which are predominant in the north while Buddhism and Taoism are predominant in the south.The fake map:The original map (showing the religion with most religious organisations, i.e. the places of worship, by county, as explained here):There are many other fake maps even worse than these, produced by Christian missionary organisations in America (which from their offices in an American skyscraper pretend to calculate how many Christians there are in China). The following fake map is made by the American Christian missionary organisation called Asia Harvest (which is the same as the Joshua Project of Christian colonisation of the so-called 10/40 window).TRUTHFUL STATISTICS BASED ON SAMPLED SURVEYSAccording to the most recent sampled surveys (China Family Panel Studies 2014, cf. Wenzel-Teuber): 73.56% of the Chinese are either irreligious or practise the communal and familial worship of gods and ancestors, 15.87% declare themselves Buddhists, 7.6% of other religions (including Taoist priests and organised folk religious doctrines), 2.5% Christians and 0.45% Muslims (the actual proportion of Muslims is higher, about 2%; this survey focused on the Han Chinese majority and did not take into account the Hui Chinese and Uyghurs).Religion by province (CFPS 2012–2014, CSLS 2010):Sources:Wenzel-Teuber, Katharina. "Statistics on Religions and Churches in the People's Republic of China – Update for the Year 2016" (PDF). Religions & Christianity in Today's China. VII (2). pp. 26–53. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 July 2017.Data from the Chinese Spiritual Life Survey (CSLS) 2010 for Chinese ancestorists, and from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2009 for Christians. Reported in Wang, Xiuhua (2015). "Explaining Christianity in China: Why a Foreign Religion has Taken Root in Unfertile Ground" (PDF). Baylor University. p. 15. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 September 2015.Gai, Rong Hua; Gao, Jun Hui (22 December 2016). "Multiple-Perspective Analysis on the Geological Distribution of Christians in China". PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences. 2 (1). pp. 809–817. doi:10.20319/pijss.2016.s21.809817. ISSN 2454-5899. (Contains the data of both Buddhists and Christians by province from CFPS 2012)Data from Yang, Zongde (2010). "Study on Current Muslim Population in China" (PDF). Jinan Muslim (2). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 April 2017. Reported in Min, Junqing (2013). "The Present Situation and Characteristics of Contemporary Islam in China" (PDF). JISMOR (8). Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 June 2017. p. 29.TRUTHFUL MAPS BASED ON SAMPLED SURVEYS (see the sources just hereabove):Map of ancestor worship in China (16%):Map of Buddhism in China (15.87%):Map of Christianity in China (2.5%):Map of Islam in China (2%):A LESSON ON RELIGION IN CHINAIt is important to note that the following concepts do not identify separate things in Chinese thought: “culture”, “worship of gods” (note, not “religion”, which in China has a narrower meaning, as explained further below), “ethnicity”, the “identity” of each individual, and even the “State”, are facets of the same whole and not separate concepts. Note that even the Western word culture derives from Latin cultura, which is the same as “cultivation” and referred to the cultivation of the gods. The distinction between “religion” and “culture” happened in relatively recent times even in Western cultures, due to Christianity (but this is another story, and I will not explain it here).The largest religion among the Chinese is definable as a cosmic and scientific religion, which is an integral aspect of the Chinese identity itself—Chineseness—, consisting in the worship of the gods of the environment and of the forefathers of the kins and of the nation, all under Heaven, Tian (天), a universal idea of God as the vault of Heaven and its order, which is the same as the ancient Indo-European concept of Dyeus (I also recommend to read this answer of mine about the same topic). As it is Chineseness itself, this religion does not have an objectifying name (though some scholars have named it either “Shenism” or “Shenxianism”, and it is known in the West as “Chinese religion” or “Chinese popular religion”).80% of the Chinese practise this religion, though it does not show up in surveys since it is not even considered a “religion” (zongjiao) in Chinese terminology, but rather a tradition of culture. The term zongjiao in China is used exclusively for doctrinal religions (like Buddhism and Christianity), not for the popular worship of gods and ancestors, which is a tradition free from doctrines and dogmas. This is why most Chinese identify themselves as wu zongjiao (i.e. “without religion”). They may also be considered “atheists” from a Western viewpoint, since they do not believe in God intended as an otherworldly entity separated from its creation.As explained in the following speech by the renowned scholar of Chinese religion John Lagerwey (whom is a true expert of religion in China, not like some others wildly promoted in recent years by American media), and well expressed by the title of one of his works,[1] China is a “religious state”: The traditional worship of gods and ancestors constitutes the fabric of Chinese society and the foundation of the Chinese state itself. It is one of the big lies of the Western media to present China as an “atheist state”. Even the Communist Party is not (or no longer) “atheist”, but embedded in the tradition of cultivating the roots of the Chinese civilisation, its “characteristics”, which are its forefather-gods and its ways to approach the gods of the broader cosmos.Huangdi, the “Yellow Emperor”, forefather of the Chinese race and representation on earth of the God of the north pole stars (Shangdi, the “Supreme Deity”), is the ethnic god of the Chinese and one of the most revered in “Chinese religion”:Worship of Shennong Yandi in Gaoping, Shanxi:Worship of Nuwa in Henan:Temple of the Mother Goddess of the Yellow River in Ningxia:Worship of Confucius:Footnotes[1] China: A Religious State

It is a hoax well-orchestrated by the Anglo-American media. All the tales about the growth of Christianity in China are vicious fake news spread by the evangelical Christian lobby in America, mostly as part of campaigns of yellow journalism, i.e. deliberately fabricated fake news, exaggerations and sensationalism meant to overawe the foe—China in this case—and bend public opinion against it. These anonymous questions on Quora may be part of the same campaign, carried on by bots. I have been following these lines of propaganda for years and I have been able to trace them back to some American so-called “think tanks” and missionary organisations.Image credit: Thorsten J. Pattberg, a German Confucian philosopher who works at the Peking University. His website: PATTBERG.ORGTHE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN HOAXERS FROM AMERICAThese fake news are spread through the Anglo-American media by evangelical Christian organisations such as the John Templeton Foundation and many others, and by scholars who are financed by them.The scholar who has been the main propagator of this type of information in recent years is the Chinese American Christian Fenggang Yang.We read: <<Fenggang Yang is openly Christian and his theories have been criticized as biased in favor of Christianity by many other scholars of Chinese religion. […] The Center on Religion and Chinese Society is funded by the Templeton Foundation, an American organization criticized for promoting Christian-biased research in the field of religious studies. Fenggang Yang was granted $9.5 million by the Templeton Foundation to develop his projects. His statistics and projections about Christianity in China have been disputed by authorities in China and scholars including Shen Guiping. In 2014 he claimed that "China will be home to the world's largest Christian congregation by 2030", despite in 2010 he said that "Christians remain a small minority in China today", based on a survey which found that they were "33 million, much less than most of the popular speculations". Surveys conducted in 2014 by Chinese research institutes found a similar number of Christians, or around 2% of the population. The 2014 claim was, as proclaimed by Yang himself, "based on the Pew Research Center's report of Global Christianity", another project backed by the Templeton Foundation.>>From reliable sources (the excerpts are from the Wikipedia article about “Religion in China”), we also know that:<<André Laliberté noted that despite there having been much talk about "persecution against religion (especially Christianity) in China", one should not jump to hasty conclusions, since "a large proportion of the population worship, pray, perform rituals and hold certain beliefs with the full support of the Party. Most of this activity affects people who subscribe to world views that are sometimes formally acknowledged by the state and are institutionalised, or others that are tacitly approved as customs". In this context, Christianity not only represents a small proportion of the population, but its adherents are still seen by the majority who observe traditional rituals as followers of a foreign religion that sets them apart from the body of society.>>Laliberté, André (2011). “Religion and the State in China: The Limits of Institutionalization”. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs. 40 (2): 3–15.From an academic article criticising Rodney Stark’s book A Star in the East, which is published by the Templeton Foundation, we know that:<<There has been much speculation by some Western authors about the number of Christians in China. Chris White, in a 2017 work for the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity of the Max Planck Society, criticises the data and narratives put forward by these authors. He notices that these authors work in the wake of a "Western evangelical bias" reflected in the coverage carried forward by popular media, especially in the United States, which rely upon a "considerable romanticisation" of Chinese Christians. Their data are mostly ungrounded or manipulated through undue interpretations, as "survey results do not support the authors' assertions".>>White, Chris (2017). “Counting Christians in China: A critical reading of Rodney Stark’s A star in the East: The rise of Christianity in China”. MMG Working Paper 17-03. Göttingen: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. ISSN 2192-2357.These are the results of scientific surveys conducted by the Chinese Family Panel Studies in 2012 and 2014:As you can see, the identification with Buddhism has seen a big increase in 2014 (due to the change in survey methodologies which allowed for a better estimation of religious populations outside the state-sanctioned religious institutions). Protestantism and Catholicism are, instead, static.The following table shows the distribution of religions by age group according to the CFPS 2012. As you can see, Christianity, while being a small minority in all age groups, is more popular among the elderly (2.9%), while decreases among the youth (1.5%). So, Christianity in China is not growing at all; actually, it is declining among the younger generations of Chinese.Source for the data: Wenzel-Teuber, Katharina (2017). “Statistics on Religions and Churches in the People’s Republic of China”. Religions & Christianity in Today's China. (VII) 2: 26-53. China Zentrum e.V. ISSN: 2192-9289.THE PROBLEM OF FAKE AND MISLEADING MAPSYang is also the author and spreader of the following fake map of religion in China. The map has been misrepresented by Reuters and Business Insider as showing the “largest religion by county”, while according to the original from the Purdue University’s CRCS it shows the “religion with the largest number of registered places of worship by county”. Considering that Christian churches and Islamic mosques are mandatorily registered and monitored by the state, while most Buddhist and Taoist temples are not registered, and all Confucian and folk religious temples are not registered (and are the most numerous, between 1 and 2 million temples compared to the few tens of thousands places of worship of the registered religions [Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Taoism]), the map is utterly misleading and made up to show Christianity and Islam as majority in certain areas, by excluding Confucianism and folk religion, which are predominant in the north while Buddhism and Taoism are predominant in the south.The fake map:The original map (showing the religion with most religious organisations, i.e. the places of worship, by county, as explained here):There are many other fake maps even worse than these, produced by Christian missionary organisations in America (which from their offices in an American skyscraper pretend to calculate how many Christians there are in China). The following fake map is made by the American Christian missionary organisation called Asia Harvest (which is the same as the Joshua Project of Christian colonisation of the so-called 10/40 window).TRUTHFUL STATISTICS BASED ON SAMPLED SURVEYSAccording to the most recent sampled surveys (China Family Panel Studies 2014, cf. Wenzel-Teuber): 73.56% of the Chinese are either irreligious or practise the communal and familial worship of gods and ancestors, 15.87% declare themselves Buddhists, 7.6% of other religions (including Taoist priests and organised folk religious doctrines), 2.5% Christians and 0.45% Muslims (the actual proportion of Muslims is higher, about 2%; this survey focused on the Han Chinese majority and did not take into account the Hui Chinese and Uyghurs).Religion by province (CFPS 2012–2014, CSLS 2010):Sources:Wenzel-Teuber, Katharina. "Statistics on Religions and Churches in the People's Republic of China – Update for the Year 2016" (PDF). Religions & Christianity in Today's China. VII (2). pp. 26–53. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 July 2017.Data from the Chinese Spiritual Life Survey (CSLS) 2010 for Chinese ancestorists, and from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2009 for Christians. Reported in Wang, Xiuhua (2015). "Explaining Christianity in China: Why a Foreign Religion has Taken Root in Unfertile Ground" (PDF). Baylor University. p. 15. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 September 2015.Gai, Rong Hua; Gao, Jun Hui (22 December 2016). "Multiple-Perspective Analysis on the Geological Distribution of Christians in China". PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences. 2 (1). pp. 809–817. doi:10.20319/pijss.2016.s21.809817. ISSN 2454-5899. (Contains the data of both Buddhists and Christians by province from CFPS 2012)Data from Yang, Zongde (2010). "Study on Current Muslim Population in China" (PDF). Jinan Muslim (2). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 April 2017. Reported in Min, Junqing (2013). "The Present Situation and Characteristics of Contemporary Islam in China" (PDF). JISMOR (8). Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 June 2017. p. 29.TRUTHFUL MAPS BASED ON SAMPLED SURVEYS (see the sources just hereabove):Map of ancestor worship in China (16%):Map of Buddhism in China (15.87%):Map of Christianity in China (2.5%):Map of Islam in China (2%):A LESSON ON RELIGION IN CHINAIt is important to note that the following concepts do not identify separate things in Chinese thought: “culture”, “worship of gods” (note, not “religion”, which in China has a narrower meaning, as explained further below), “ethnicity”, the “identity” of each individual, and even the “State”, are facets of the same whole and not separate concepts. Note that even the Western word culture derives from Latin cultura, which is the same as “cultivation” and referred to the cultivation of the gods. The distinction between “religion” and “culture” happened in relatively recent times even in Western cultures, due to Christianity (but this is another story, and I will not explain it here).The largest religion among the Chinese is definable as a cosmic and scientific religion, which is an integral aspect of the Chinese identity itself—Chineseness—, consisting in the worship of the gods of the environment and of the forefathers of the kins and of the nation, all under Heaven, Tian (天), a universal idea of God as the vault of Heaven and its order, which is the same as the ancient Indo-European concept of Dyeus (I also recommend to read this answer of mine about the same topic). As it is Chineseness itself, this religion does not have an objectifying name (though some scholars have named it either “Shenism” or “Shenxianism”, and it is known in the West as “Chinese religion” or “Chinese popular religion”).80% of the Chinese practise this religion, though it does not show up in surveys since it is not even considered a “religion” (zongjiao) in Chinese terminology, but rather a tradition of culture. The term zongjiao in China is used exclusively for doctrinal religions (like Buddhism and Christianity), not for the popular worship of gods and ancestors, which is a tradition free from doctrines and dogmas. This is why most Chinese identify themselves as wu zongjiao (i.e. “without religion”). They may also be considered “atheists” from a Western viewpoint, since they do not believe in God intended as an otherworldly entity separated from its creation.As explained in the following speech by the renowned scholar of Chinese religion John Lagerwey (whom is a true expert of religion in China, not like some others wildly promoted in recent years by American media), and well expressed by the title of one of his works,[1] China is a “religious state”: The traditional worship of gods and ancestors constitutes the fabric of Chinese society and the foundation of the Chinese state itself. It is one of the big lies of the Western media to present China as an “atheist state”. Even the Communist Party is not (or no longer) “atheist”, but embedded in the tradition of cultivating the roots of the Chinese civilisation, its “characteristics”, which are its forefather-gods and its ways to approach the gods of the broader cosmos.Huangdi, the “Yellow Emperor”, forefather of the Chinese race and representation on earth of the God of the north pole stars (Shangdi, the “Supreme Deity”), is the ethnic god of the Chinese and one of the most revered in “Chinese religion”:Worship of Shennong Yandi in Gaoping, Shanxi:Worship of Nuwa in Henan:Temple of the Mother Goddess of the Yellow River in Ningxia:Worship of Confucius:Footnotes[1] China: A Religious State