Chinese media have reported that a political advisor wants Bibles to be placed in hotel rooms over the period of the Olympic Games when they take place in Beijing in 2008.

Liu Banyan, vice-president of the state-sanctioned China Patriotic Catholic Association, believes placing the Bibles in the hotel rooms would help repair China's reputation abroad as a religiously intolerant country, the Xingu news agency reported.

China has shown slight improvement in the area of religious freedom, dropping from tenth place in 2006 to twelfth in the Open Doors' 2007 'World Watch List' of the top 50 worst persecutors. China Aid Association also reported a decrease in the number of reported house raids in 2006 in comparison to previous years, although it said more than 600 Christians, mostly church leaders, were detained in 2006 by the Chinese government.

Liu told Xingu news, "A large number of foreign athletes and tourists will swarm into Beijing for the Games, a majority of whom have religious belief, and providing Bibles at hotels will meet their religious needs."

According to Xingu news, Liu said at the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country's most senior political advisory body, that, "The Bible is a must at hotel rooms in foreign countries, especially European countries."

Liu told the news agency that placing Bibles in Beijing's hotel rooms throughout the Games would "help clear up foreigners' misunderstandings of China in the area of religion".

The communist Chinese government has a reputation worldwide for its strict regime towards religious organisations, only allowing worship to take place in state-monitored churches, temples and mosques. Churches operating outside these establishments are labelled as 'underground churches' and their members are frequently jailed and attacked.

Officially China only recognises five religious groups as "legal" - Buddhists, Muslims, Taoists, Roman Catholics, and Protestants.

The state-operated China Daily newspaper recently reported that a religious revival is taking place in China after 31.4 per cent of respondents above the age of 16 in a survey of 4,500 people in the country said they considered themselves to be "pious" and 12 per cent of those professing to be followers of a faith said they were Christian.