Squeezing into the church after having waited in a queue for more than two hours, Ms. Wang said: "I merely want to experience the difference of another religion. Although Christmas Day is not a holiday for Buddhists, I still felt delighted by this festive atmosphere."

Located on Hengshan Road, widely known as the city's street of bars, the Community Church, Shanghai's largest Christian church, welcomed nearly 6,000 people on Christmas Eve.

Although the service was due to begin around 7pm, some locals had been waiting outside since one o'clock in the afternoon.

"Tonight, while celebrating the birth of Jesus we notice that some people in the congregation are attending a service for the first time. Therefore let us pray that God also brings them happiness," Xie Bingguo, the church's priest, announced before theservice.

All the 1,400 seats in the church were full. Even the aisles were crowded with people. Some were watching closed-circuit TV on the second floor.

When the service began and singing echoed through the church, Wang was ecstatic, saying though she did not understand the meaning of the songs very well, she sensed their religious significance.

"With China's rapid social, economic and cultural development, Christianity in this country is consolidating its theological progress. In my view, tolerance plays an important role in the process," Xie said.

Compared with the 1950s when only Christians were allowed to enter churches, Christianity in China today was much more advanced as its churches were also open to non-Christians, the priest said.

A new survey released by Shanghai University shows that in China's prosperous coastal areas half of the Christians have social connections with followers of other religions, such as Buddhism, Catholicism, Taoism and Islam.

Though believing in different religions, they still live in harmony and are happy to help each other, according to the survey.

The survey also show that to date, China boasts more than 100 million religion believers who mostly follow Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Christianity.

And there are over 85,000 religious venues, 3,000 religious groups and more than 300,000 religious professionals nationwide.

All the religions exist in equality and harmony in today's China. Since the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, no disputes between religions have occurred, according to the survey. Nowadays, even in those areas where religious conflicts frequently happened in history, people with different beliefs live in harmony.

In Tingtou village in the Fu'an region in south China's Fujian Province, fights erupted many times between the local Catholics and Buddhists during the period from the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Today, there are still big differences in customs and rites between the village's three-fifths Catholic population and two-fifths Buddhist population. But what has changed is that they now live together peacefully.

A Buddhist abbot at the Guanghua Temple in the region said nowadays it was not rare to see Catholics visiting Buddhist temples.

Villagers said they were convinced that people could hold different beliefs. But everyone's belief must enjoy the same equality and respect as no religion was better than another.

Li Xiangping, director of the Center for Religion and Peace Studies under Shanghai University, said an open and tolerant attitude had shaped in China amid its different religions.

On the one hand, this could be attributed to the tolerant spirit long enshrined in China's traditional culture. Those religions coming from the West centuries ago, such as Christianity, had been well accepted and developed in China's society as time went on. Many Chinese nowadays respected those western-based religions as much as they did the homegrown ones.

On the other hand and more importantly, since the People's Republic of China was founded, the Chinese government had adopted new policies to ensure the freedom of religious beliefs, which helped form a new politics-religion relationship adapting to the country's conditions.

The road of religious coexistence with Chinese characteristics might also be a good example for those countries where religious conflicts frequently occurred, Li added.

(People?s Daily December 27, 2002)