On China’s Internet the Bible trumps Mao’s Little Red Book and the Pope tops the
Prime Minister
May 07,2014:On China’s internet, the Bible has trumped Mao's Little Red Book, Pope
Francis is more popular than Li Keqiang, Jesus tops Xi Jinping, and Christians far
outnumber members of the Communist Party. These are the surprising results of an analysis
conducted by Foreign Policy on Weibo, the popular Chinese micro-blogging site. A researcher
analyzed the flow of words quoted on the site, used by about 300 million Chinese,
and compiled a ranking of popularity. There are about 17 million biblical quotations
compared to 60 thousand attributable to Chairman Mao. Users who discuss the various
Christian churches are 41.8 million, while those who speak of the Communist Party
are 5.3 million. In addition, although present every day in the national press, and
often also in the international press - President Xi Jinping is mentioned by 4 million:
Jesus Christ, much less present in the national media, by 18 million. Similarly, Pope
Francis has many more entries than Prime Minister Li Keqiang.
According to Bethany Allen, who led the study, the results "are amazing" but they
have a logical explanation, as about 100 thusand Chinese officials in charge of censoring
the network "have a big role to play. It is their job to delete anything that may
be deemed politically sensitive, so any entry containing the names of top leaders
in China is more likely to be deleted in order to avoid controversy".
Source: AsiaNews