China has stripped literary children's classics in elementary school textbooks of all references to Christianity, replacing “God” and “Bible,” with secular terms, such as “good heaven” and “several books.”

The story of Daniel Defoe’s swashbuckling traveller Robinson Crusoe reads “several Portuguese books,” rather than “the Bible and prayer books.”

A line in The Little Match Girl, whose title character sells matchbooks in the wintry cold, by Hans Christian Andersen, now says: “When a star falls, a person will leave the world,” altering the latter half of the sentence, which previously read, “the spirit resides with God.”

And in Anton Chekhov’s short story, Vanka, about a child shoemaker apprentice, references to God and the act of praying are left entirely out of the text.

Publishers began releasing the new sixth-grade textbooks over the last year, altered from earlier versions. The literary classics are the only school materials for lower grades that include any religious references.

The book purge is also expanding beyond the classroom.

On Oct 15, the Ministry of Education announced that any books that 'publicise religions teachings" are '"inappropriate" and should thus be eliminated from libraries. A week later, a public library in Gansu province burned 65 books after authorities claimed they were "illegal and religious publications" that contained "deviant tendencies.”