A report from United Bible Society (UBS) reviews the situation of official printing of the Bible in China by numbers, reminding a fast-growing need for the Bible across this enormous country with billions of people.

Currently, Amity Printing Company in Nanjing, which works closely with the government-sanctioned (Protestant) Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and Patriotic Catholic Church, is the only authorized Bible printing press in China.

According to UBS, the latest figures reveal that a total of 5.2 million Bibles and New Testaments had been printed by end of October 2005. 3 million copies remain in Mainland China for distribution while the other 2.2 million copies are exported to Bible Societies and other publishers.

Moreover, in January 2006, the Amity Printing Company celebrated a cumulative total of 46 million copies of Bibles and New Testaments printed since its establishment in 1987.

UBS’s China Partnership Program assists the distribution of the Bible in Mainland China officially with Amity Printing Company. It also has a strong relationship with the Catholic Church in China in this aspect.

In October 2005, 25,000 Bibles and 50,000 New Testaments were printed for the China Catholic Church, with the help of Bible paper subsidy from UBS, UBS reported. Accumulatively, 700,000 Bibles and New Testaments have been printed by Amity Press with the support of UBS for the China Catholic Church since 1996.

Particularly, in the Catholic Shanghai Diocese, UBS provided support in printing and distributing more than one million copies of the New Testament, based on the New Jerusalem Version, over the past 10 years, according to UBS.

Reviewing last year, some hundreds of people are reached to receive the Gospel through the Beijing International Book Fair held on Sept. 1-5. More than 600 people browsed and read Scripture Portions and books as they visited the UBS booth, UBS said. The China Partnership was participating for the first time in this important event.

Many visitors became interested in purchasing copies of the Bible, especially the Chinese-English diglot Bible. Others were also interested in the Scripture materials for children.