The CRS is aimed to document the current situation of religious venues and the trends of their developments, to collect data systematically in all aspects about Chinese religions, to summarize the pattern of religious development in transitional China, and to provide high quality data for academic research and policy-making.

The CRS collects data systematically on individual, institutional and regional levels. The CRS concentrate on four main dimensions of religious venues: organization, religiosity, social interactions and church-state relations

The main theme of CRS is the relations between venue type and its soc-political orientation.