Religion
Most Chinese, 59% of the population, or about 767 million people, identify themselves as non-religious. However, rituals and religion, especially the traditional beliefs of Confucianism and Taoism and Buddhism, play a significant part in the lives of many. About 33% of the population follow a mixture of beliefs usually referred to by statisticians as "Traditional Beliefs" or just "Other".
About 8% of the Chinese population are avowed Buddhists, with Mahayana Buddhism (大乘, Dacheng) and its subsets Pure Land (Amidism), Tiantai and Zen being the most widely practiced. With an estimated 100 million adherents, Buddhism is the country''s largest organized religion. Other forms of Buddhism, such as Theravada Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, are practiced largely by ethnic minorities along the geographic fringes of the Chinese mainland. A government official recently suggested that there are 16 million Christians. However, an independent survey by East China Normal University estimated the Christian population at 40 million, much higher than the government''s numbers but much lower than numbers favored by some Western observers. Official figures also indicate that there are about 20 million Muslims.