Persecution Blog points out that the Chinese government is going to start printing one million bibles a month.

The article they link to interviews Bob Fu, president of China Aid Association, who doesn’t find this development as rosy as it might seem:

But while Chinese officials have heralded the development, Bob Fu…says the communist government could do more to get Bibles into the hands of Chinese citizens. “If China is serious on this issue of printing Bibles, they should make the Bibles available, at least in the public library [and] bookstores and so that citizens can have free access to buy it if they want,” states Fu.

Fu says the Chinese government has nothing to brag about with this new production plant. He says with the world’s largest population (1.3 billion people), China has the largest number of Christians within its borders. “To print a few million Bibles does not really show there’s any religious freedom to boast [about],” the Christian activists argues.

He says despite efforts to make the Chinese government look tolerant, the Bible is still restricted in the public square.

While access is still government run, this seems to me to be a positive step for Chinese religious freedom in my mind. But I also live in Michigan and am not Chinese.

English speakers have a cornucopia of translations to choose from (for good and ill), does anyone know if the same selection exists for a place like China? Other thoughts?

On a related note: do we have any Chinese readers?