According to Aikman, the number of government controlled Protestant churches in China is large: “At last count, there were approximately 13,000 that are open. You can go in and out on Sunday, and nobody's going to arrest you or ask who you are.”

The difference between the Three Self Protestant churches and China’s network of unofficial house churches is that the Three Self churches do not engage in any evangelism whatsoever. “They are not allowed to evangelize,” Aikman explains.

Ironically, a majority of pastors, even in this Communist-controlled organization, are Evangelical Christians. “They preach good Southern Baptist-type sermons, but they cannot proselytize or evangelize,” says Aikman. “This is the real big difference between the Three Self church and the house church.”

When people ask, “Is there religious freedom in China?” Aikman says it is accurate to answer “yes” – but within limits. “You can go to church and you can even buy a Bible, but only in the church. You can't buy a Bible in a bookstore. And you can't evangelize. So, the Christians who don't want to live under those restrictions, who are very eager to evangelize about their faith, tend to go to the house churches.”

Aikman agrees with reports that China’s government has cracked down on unofficial religious activity this year. “Most people think that this is a prelude to the Olympics,” he adds. “Whenever China has some big international event, they round up all the usual suspects so that nobody will be squawking in the wrong terms to visiting foreigners.”

Between April and July 2007, China expelled 100 foreigners for Christian activities. “These were basically foreigners, mostly Americans, who had secular jobs in China like teaching English or doing business,” says Aikman. “But in their spare time, they were sort of secret missionaries.”  It counts as the biggest expulsion of foreign missionaries since the 1950s.

According to Aikman, “They have also cracked down on Christian human rights organizations in Beijing. They have beaten people up, arrested people and threatened them.  They have really cracked down a lot harder this year than really almost any time in the previous 10 years, trying to make sure that they have everything under control before the Olympics.”