Qigong in China has a history as long as about 7000 years. Due to its intimate relations with religion in recent 2000 years, Qigong has been considered as a kind of feudalistic superstition, and is treated as a subject of critics in China. The most serious accusation against Qigong appeared in the Culture Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Many qigong asters were put into Jail, and some of them were sentenced to death. Qigong was deeply suppressed and almost disappeared from China.

But soon after the Culture Revolution young scientists began to explore the nature of Qi. They measured the infrared spectrum of the Qi emitted by some Qigong masters, and found a low frequency modulated spectrum, which is quite different from the horizontal straight line spectrum related to ordinary people. Their discovery showed that Qi is a physical reality, and is not an idealistic term. Imparting Qigong to people does not mean spreading superstition at all. Qigong really can improve one's health an cure diseases. It is of benefit to the people. An upsurge of learning Qigong is formed. It is estimated that in 1984, more than 10 millions Chinese practiced Qigong everyday. Since 1986, more and more high level Qigong masters gradually b- came active in our society, and Dr. Yan Xin can be taken as their representative. People are attracted by their wonderful abilities of curing diseases and their miraculous power. A new upsurge is arising quickly in China. It is estimated that there are more than 50 millions of people practicing Qigong everyday.

The swift development of Qigong caused the resentment of those who opposed Qigong. They planned to attack Qigong. In May 1988, they invited some Americans to China to advise Chinese people not to believe Qigong. According to them, Qigong is just a sham. Since August 1988, a series articles against Qigong have been published in the newspapers, but they have few responses, because there are many scientific experiments which prove the reality of Qigong phenomena. People believe the scientific facts more than malicious attacks. Then they changed their strategy to attack the support of Qigong--The scientific experiments on Qigong. But they could not find true scientists to help them, so that all they can do is just play dirty tricks. In January 1989, in Hongkong three lecturers appeared on TV to tell the audiences that Yan Xin has done false experiments on Qigong. They fooled the audiences by telling lies. Why did they attack Yan Xin? The reason is that because Yan Xin is the most famous Qigong master in China and the first one to cooperate with professors of many famous universities in China. If an Xin did experiment honestly, then all the experiment articles published under his name would he completely falsified. If the fore- most Qigong master in China is but a trickster, then qigong must be a deceitful trick.

They made every efforts to propagate this lie, and they were almost successful. The officers in China who had supported Qigong now maintain a strict silence; restrictions to Qigong activities were announced by the Bureau of Chinese medicine; there is even a saying that Qigong is a factor of instability to China. A strong adverse current against Qigong. Qigong is in a low tide but never perished. The reason is that they attacked scientific works on Qigong in a non-scientific way, they cannot upset the facts established by scientific experiments on Qigong, i.e. the scientific foundation of Qigong The lies are just exposing by more and more scientific facts, the third upsurge of Qigong must he coming soon.

Science and qigong in China