BEIJING - China, under growing international criticism for religious intolerance, plans to build two new Protestant churches in Beijing at a cost of 30 million yuan ($3.62 million), officials said on Thursday.
Design work under the state-approved Christian church had already begun on the buildings which will each seat 1,500, said Hua Qian, an official at the Beijing Religious Affairs Bureau.
Beijing now has 17 official Catholic churches and eight Protestant churches which overflow with worshippers.
State-sponsored churches claim more than 10 million Protestant members -- 14 times the number in 1949 -- and five million Catholics.
"It's a natural phenomenon," said Hua. "China has had policies of religious freedom and now the government is managing the policies better. They're attaching more importance to the church."
Estimates of the number of Protestants who worship in underground "house churches" range up to 20 million. The Vatican estimates eight million Catholics are still loyal to the Pope.
International human rights groups have condemned China for its crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, outlawed as an "evil cult."
In its annual human rights report issued in February, the U.S. State Department cited official "interference, repression and persecution" of Chinese Protestants and Catholics. Hundreds of churches were razed or closed in the eastern province of Zhejiang, the report said.
CHERISHING CHRISTIANS
Hua said in recent years Beijing had spent at least 100 million yuan repairing old churches and cathedrals, many of them built by foreign missionaries.
Much of the money was spent on a facelift for East Church, a Catholic cathedral lit up at night as a landmark in Wangfujing, Beijing's commercial heart.
"The government values, cherishes and protects Christians' rights," said another official at the Beijing Religious Affairs Bureau.
"As long as their demands are reasonable, the government will take care of them," she said.
She said there were approximately 30,000 Protestants and 40,000 Catholics in Beijing, but no official figures were kept.
Christianity spread for centuries in China before the Communists took power in 1949, closing churches and throwing out foreign missionaries.
In the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, many churches were burned and relics smashed.
But in recent years, Christianity has flourished, mirroring the decline of official Communist ideology and the rise of a consumer society which has widened the gulf between rich and poor and left an underclass searching for spiritual comfort.