Amity Foundation

(continued from Amity Press)

On its website, amityfoundation.org, Amity Foundation states, "Amity Foundation, an independent Chinese social development organization, was created in 1985 on the initiative of Chinese Christians."

That statement is misleading. Amity Foundation isn't independent of the control of the Chinese Communist Party, which made the final decision to create Amity Foundation, selects its leaders, and keeps a watchful eye on all of its activities.

Amity Foundation did not respond directly to our 2012 email. Within months of receiving it, however, Amity Foundation began to report the domestic distribution vs. export data for the Bibles it prints. But their most recent numbers (below) still indicate three issues.

First, they contradict the numbers that Amity reported in 2008 (below). In both charts, 2,307,737 Bibles are reported for 1994, indicating that the same method of tabulation was used to create both charts. Yet, for all other years from 1988 to 2007, higher numbers were claimed in the 2008 report than in the 2016 report, up to 71% higher (2002), indicating a two-decade long pattern of consistently having inflated the number of Bibles printed.

Second, the top chart shows that the number of Amity-printed Bibles distributed inside China hasn't increased since 1996 even though the number of Christians in China has increased dramatically since then.

Third, the top chart also shows that after declining for three consecutive years, the number of Amity-printed Bibles distributed inside China doubled between 2002 and 2003, signaling that the number of Amity-printed Bibles being distributed in China isn't based on demand; it is being restricted and/or controlled.

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