Qigong

Qigong (or ch'i kung) refers to a wide variety of traditional cultivation practices that involve methods of accumulating, circulating, and working with qi, breathing or energy within the body. Qigong is practiced for health maintenance purposes, as a therapeutic intervention, as a medical profession, a spiritual path and/or component of Chinese martial arts.

The qi in qigong means air in Chinese, and, by extension, life force, dynamic energy or even cosmic breath. Gong means work applied to a discipline or the resultant level of skill, so qigong is thus breath work or energy work. The term was coined in the twentieth-century and its currency, David Ownby suggests, speaks of a cultural desire to separate cultivation from superstition, to secularize and preserve valuable aspects of traditional Chinese practices.

Attitudes toward the scientific basis for qigong vary markedly. Most Western medical practitioners and many practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, as well as the Chinese government, view qigong as a set of breathing and movement exercises, with possible benefits to health through stress reduction and exercise. Others see qigong in more metaphysical terms, claiming that qi can be circulated through channels called meridians.

Although the roots of qigong can be traced back millennia, Montréal scholar David Ownby understands qigong as a development of post-Mao China, contending that with the end of the Cultural Revolution came an implicit admission in China that Marxist ideology was useless, and that the 'totalitarian state' wherein the party leader was 'god' was all but defunct. A spiritual crisis thus ensued. Because the 'big religions' were desecrated and banned during the Cultural Revolution, to many Chinese they no longer held the attraction they once did. Qigong is said to have evolved within this historical context, as a “spiritual, slightly mystical branch of Chinese medicine". Ownby gives a similar account of the history of qigong in China. Qigong was promoted in post-Mao China for both practical and ideological reasons, and in this period it took on "unprecedented importance". On a practical level, it was hoped that qigong would improve the general health of the populace and thus curtail government healthcare expenditure.
Ideologically, Ownby contends that many within the Communist government were 'quite taken' with the idea of qigong being a specifically 'Chinese science', a part of the PRC's "new nationalism, a frequently chauvinistic claim to cultural greatness and superpower status". Qigong was not considered religious either by the authorities or by qigong practitioners, which immensely helped its growth. Eventually the state-administered China Qigong Scientific Research Association was formed, supposed to register qigong groups and conduct 'scientific' research. By the time the association was established, there were already 2000 qigong organizations and between 60 and 200 million practitioners across China.

Qigong quickly became a social phenomenon of 'considerable importance'; the topic was also explored by novelists and journalists, and qigong newspapers and magazines appeared in abundance to cater for the public's interest in the subject. The original small-group, master-disciple pattern was transformed into a mass experience, with qigong 'masters' organising 'mass rallies' to demonstrate to paying customers a range of qigong specific phenomena such as trance, possession, and a variety of otherworldly states. Qigong was practised widely in public parks and on university campuses. Demographics included both the 'old and suffering' as well as the 'young and curious'. Ownby suggests that the profile of qigong practitioners during this period fit that of the Chinese population in general, “men and women, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, powerful and powerless, urban and rural, Party and non-Party”.

Johnson writes that the early 1990s saw a 'qigong craze', with qigong being a widely accepted part of society. Qigong was able to adapt itself to a scientific discourse, which allowed it to survive the suspicions of the atheist state. It was heralded as a form of physical therapy, to be supervised by doctors. Experiments were conducted which purported to show that qigong could cure chronic health problems. Claims that qigong could have some role in developing latent 'supernatural powers' also emerged, such as the ability to levitate, heal illness, telekinesis through emissions of qi, the ability to 'read via the ear', and a “host of other remarkable talents, many of which would fall under our category of extrasensory perception”.

Johnson opines that the Party was to some degree still distrustful of qigong. Qigong remained a private exercise, as opposed to formal religions which center on temples, churches and mosques. These can be run by government officials and are ensured to remain loyal to the state. Johnson's analysis here coincides with that of Chan. While qigong is focused inwardly, outside the state's control, it is performed publicly in groups: “To a government that is used to controlling all aspects of public life, this is perplexing: qigong practitioners are in public and doing something en masse, so by rights they should be formed in an organisation and this organisation should in some way be run by the government. But what they are doing together is meditating, an inner discipline that the party can't monitor”. Ownby suspects that qigong's ostensible autonomy from the state is in fact partly what contributed to its great popularity. Johnson writes that the 1990s saw an 'uneasy standoff'; the 'Three Nos' policy was adopted: No Promoting, No Criticizing, No Debating.

Ownby comments that the emergence of qigong coincided at a historic moment where technology and means of communication—such as books, tapes, television and Internet—were greatly advanced, allowing such groups to become aware of their size and geographical reach. Ownby suggests that this is a paradoxical situation of a deeply rooted Chinese tradition now adapting to a modern setting.