New APD printing facility Photo: By courtesy of the Bible Society NSW

China: New Amity Bible Printing Press opens in Nanjing

Nanjing/China | 23.05.2008 | APD | unknow

New building can print 12 million Bibles a year

The Amity Printing Company’s (APC) new printing facility in Nanjing, China was officially opened on May 18 and will give the potential for Bible production to double to 12 million per year.

The new press there, a British-made Timson T32 costing 32 million yuan (about US$4.3 million) which joins two others moved from the original APC plant, is capable of printing 18,800 pages per hour.

APC, one of the largest Bible printing presses in the world, began operating in 1987 and became a joint venture between Amity Printing Press (now Amity Development Company) and United Bible Societies (UBS) the following year.

With strong support from the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) of the Protestant Churches in China and the China Christian Council (CCC), the Chinese State Administration for Religious Affairs and the Jiangsu provincial and Nanjing municipal governments, APC quickly exceeded its design capacity of 600,000 Bibles per year and by December 2007 was celebrating the production of its 50 millionth Bible.

In the same month, an official agreement extended until 2018 the joint venture between Amity Development Company and UBS in APC which makes the printing of Bibles possible. The provision of paper is supported by the Australian based Bible Society NSW (Sydney) donors who also provide funds for Bible distribution in China.

Despite severe weather difficulties in January, all the machinery was moved into the new facility and output of 700,000 Bibles per month was achieved in April. And it was not only long-serving equipment that made the move to the new plant: around 100 of APC’s original staff are still faithfully involved in all aspects of Bible production.

There could be as many as 300 million people in China who practise one of the country’s five main religions, according to a 2007 poll. Although official figures put that number much lower – at 100 million – the survey, conducted among 4,500 people by professors at the East China Normal University in Shanghai, indicates that 31.4 per cent of people above the age of 16 consider themselves religious. The poll also found a significant growth of the number of Christians, who account for about 12 per cent of the country’s religious population. The China Daily news service called the poll 2007 the "country’s first major survey on religious beliefs".

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