China prints 10,000 copies of the Bible a day on an average, according to an official with the China Christian Council.

Jiang Yuchun, deputy director of the Publishing Committee of the Council told Xinhua that China is expected to print 2.9 million to 3 million copies of Bible this year.

He said, since China's implementation of the opening-up and reform policy in 1978, "the country has printed a total of 26 million copies of the Bible".

Jiang said, before the founding of new China in 1949, the country only printed around 1 million copies of Bible in Chinese.

Nanjing Amity Printing Co. Ltd, a joint venture between the Amity Foundation and the United Bible Societies Publishing Co. Ltd (Hong Kong) has been having the dominating share of Bible printing in China since its establishment in 1988.

Han Shaning, Director of the printing company, explained that his company prints annually 2 million to 3 million copies of the Bible in the past 10 years. That means "around 10,000 copies of Bible was printed during each working day," he said.

Chinese workers has 22 working days a month on an average.

Han said, apart from Chinese edition of Bible, his company has been printing the Spanish, English and French editions of the Bible and seven Chinese ethnic groups' language editions including Yi, Miao and Korean languages.

In addition, his company has also began to provide Braille edition of the Bible for the blind.

Han said, his print company receives annually about 50 foreign delegations on an average, claiming the quality of the Bible printing of his company is excellent.

Han's company also produces over a million of Christian calendars each year and makes paper-cut crafts and porcelain works with Jesus portraits, crafts with Chinese characteristics.

The local post office fetches from Han's company the Bible copies once a week for railway delivery.

He said, just after the heavy floods hit areas along the Yangtze River last year, over 60,000 copies of Bible were sent to the flood-hit areas together other disaster relief goods.

In China, it is convenient for people to go to church and buy the Bible.

Jiang Yuchun said: "China has so far opened 65 centers for Bible distribution." Apart from delivering to Christian churches nationwide, his company also sends about 1.5 million copies of the Bible to the believers and house churches by mail.

Statistics made by China Christian Council indicated that before the founding of new China in 1949, China only had less than 700,000 Christian believers while the country has over 10 million Christian believers now.

China so far has over 12,000 Christian churches nationwide.