Bible banned from online bookshops as China brags about its protection of religious freedom

The Bible has become a naughty word on JD.com

You can buy almost anything online in China, from a jumbo jet to a skyscraper. However, if you’re in the market for a copy of the Bible, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Currently, if you type “Bible” in Chinese (圣经) into JD.com, you’ll receive a message that says that one of the two largest e-commerce sites in China has nothing in stock relating to that term.

Meanwhile, similar searches on sites like Taobao, Amazon China, and DangDang.com turn up no available copies of the Bible. You can still find Bible study guides and stories, as well as other books on Christianity and the holy books of other religions, like the Quran and Book of Mormon, but the Bible itself is nowhere to be found.

This comes after a notice was circulated around on Chinese social media, stating that the Bible would no longer be sold on these online retailers, starting on March 30th.

Meanwhile, Chinese state media has reported that government regulators paid a visit to the offices of JD.com on Monday, accusing the company of “negatively impacting society” by “failing to properly regulate products,” and ordering that is site be cleaned of all “illegal content.”

What the regulators meant by “illegal content” is not clarified. However, a short time later, the Bible became a blocked word on the site.

At the same time as all of this was going on, China published a “white paper” on religious freedom, its first in more than two decades. The paper, titled “China’s Policies and Practices on Protecting Freedom of Religious Belief,” claims that the Chinese government “respects citizens’ freedom to religious belief and protects their normal religious activities” — despite ample evidence to the contrary, including crosses being torn down in Zhejiang province and long beards being banned in Xinjiang.

More tellingly, the white paper states that while China’s socialist society protects religious freedom, religious beliefs and practices must also adapt themselves to socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The official document was published just as China is reportedly on the verge of reestablishing normal relations with the Vatican, which will involve finally agreeing on a deal about the appointment of bishops in China. In 1951, the PRC cut ties with the Vatican, which still recognizes Taiwan, choosing to instead appoint its own bishops through the state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

While the white paper states that there are around 6 million Catholics and 38 million Protestants in China, non-government estimates put the number of Christians in China much higher, at about 100 million. Many of these unaccounted for followers attend underground or “house churches,” instead of official ones overseen by the Patriotic Association.