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Parapsychology in the People’s Republic of China: 1979
- 1989
Leping Zha
1 & Tron McConnell
ABSTRACT: The senior author, a graduate student of physics in the U.S.A., provides from his
personal
involvement an informal history of the parapsychology movement
in
the People’s
Republic of China (P.R.C.) over the last decade. From 1979 to 1982, research into ESP (and PK)
among children swept through China.
This study, under the name "exceptional functions of the
human body" (EFHB), gave rise to a sizeable literature and to commitments, pro and con, among
scientists.
Two protagonists emerged to carry the battle
to the highest political forum.
The
opponent of EFHB was an eminent social scientist and vice-chairman of the Chinese Academy of
Science.
The proponent was a physicist regarded internationally as the father of Chinese rock-
etry.
After public debate, ending in a collaborative test of the country’s best-known psychics, the
Communist Party ruled that both sides must cease public discussion but that unsupported research
could proceed quietly.
From 1983 to 1986, interest shifted to gifted adult psychics.
Research
was conducted partly at major universities but primarily under defense-related auspices in Beij-
ing, where gross PK effects were reported.
Meanwhile, privately circulated publications fanned
civilian research interest in parapsychology under the ancient rubrics of "qigong" and "Traditional
Chinese Medicine."
In 1987 a
set of seminal PK experiments was reported in the Chinese
Journal of Biophysics from Quinghua University.
From 1987 to 1989 interest in qigong grew
until there were perhaps 20 million participants, including top leaders of the Communist Party.
Restraints on research were quietly lifted.
Official approval was granted to a "China Society of
Somatic Science’
for the study of EFHB.
The space
scientist mentioned
earlier was made
responsible for coordinating
all of Chinese science.
The favoring of parapsychology has ap-
parently persisted despite the events of June, 1989.
Meanwhile, a divergence of the popular
qigong movement and scientific EFHB research has begun. The greater prevalence and strength
of psi effects reported from the P.R.C., as compared to laboratory experience in the West, raises a
question as to the role of the West’s Cartesian cultural heritage in determining empirical reality.
altt
.
a
fco«lance with Chinese custom, Chinese family names precede given names in this paper except
in the
author s by-line, where the U.S.A. custom of family-name-last is followed to facilitate indexing.
CUn,
f
n<^
S
l
udyin
,f
,
f?
r adoctoraI d«g*«e
physics at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He
mss
tT'
S ' 10 P
,
hyS*CS
Wuhan Uluverslty “PR- China in 1982 and an M.S. from the University of Pittsburgh
m 1988. Between 1979 and 1986 he participated in parapsychological research activities at Wuhan University Beijing
teachers College, and elsewhere.
J
°
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Introduction
AJthough references to the existence and application of psi phenomena are frequently found in
the major books of ancient Chinese history dating back 2,000 years, there
is aLo a present-day
Chinese interest m such effects.
The most recent scientific inquiries began in late 1978 when a
group of scientists
tested Tang Yu, a
12-year old boy
in Sichuan Province,
for his reported
Exceptional Functions of the Human Body" (EFHB), a widely used Chinese expression for
exurasensoiy perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK).
It was a propitious time for such a dis-
ery because the chaos of the Cultural Revolution had subsided, while economic reform had
not yet begun.
The country's intellectuals were starting to exercise some
selecting what to study, and they did not yet feel under pressure from their regular work at the
urnversmes and research msututes as they would several years later.
Likewise
for a period of
To7j“^
°ften
b6St PSi SUb*CtS ’— -der to" P-ure to devote
d
,
eSCr
l
be
.
psi"reiated activities in China between 1979 and 1989 (inclusive)
the senior
cofe“ m3Tom San??*
P?“es -
1116
covers 1979-1982 'the second
covers iyo3-l986, and the third covers 1987-1989.
Phase I (1979-1982): The Re-discovery of ESP
Early m the Twentieth Century a Chinese psychical-study society had been formed as a result
of Western influence, but the society never flourished.
In the 1960’s, reports of Western and
f“
S1
rT
pS1 Studxes apP6^ m several popular Chinese technical magazines, but shortly there-
^ beiDS "idealistiC " Md symbolic of "declining capitalism^ (Hsin,
tended fr™1966 to 1976 ^
^ ^ Cultural Revolution- which ex-
The first phase of present day Chinese psychic studies (1979-1982) was characterized bv
its
popularity. Many hundreds of children with EFHB were found throughout thermion. Grouns to
Sties
Sd
Sd eTe
S
nin
h
so
0mT
educational and research centers in Lge
1987)
500 foZJT
nt7 ??
SCCOndary SCh00ls -
^cording to a recent study (A
Reoom n Mish!? T%
r
^
fr°m more tbaa a hundred centers joined the effort
Reports published m Nature Journal (AT), which had supported the EFHB research from the
eginmng,
reported that 40 to 63 percent of children around age 10 were found to have EFHB to
some extent in a large-scale ESP investigation in Beijing (Cheng, et al.
1979- He
et al
loam
The term eIhb was expanded to include PK after it was discovered that’ subjects with ESP could
sometimes also affect the state of small objects, e.g., bend a match or
Sp
S
IdPR
^ Whlle StlH 311 UDdergraduate student ’ was able to repeat many of the reported
ESP and PK experiments successfully with his young friends. These repheationswere DerfoAed
under fairly tight conditions and without much difficulty
usually bv
iust tellincr thJL
fi-i
h
what others had claimed tobeabletodo and letting them try hnm^ately
1151
8 ^
In the early 1980's, nearly every issue ofW reported new discoveries of EFHB
Researcher,
used a variety of analytical insmunents in an attempt to detect any •nT.S'JmSt
Ta ??“’* e“0ra '
investigations, signals
ZZ
ions moduiated by low audio frequencies to gamma photons were deteefed, although many of
the effecht were weak.
Traces of exposure were found on promoted tr-my'fifT, fd“X
“ Sh"sh“ “ * “C“C*1 fcvei
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physical, chemical, and biological detectors registered an "output." The researchers were excited,
convinced that their discoveries were not artifactual but were of scientific importance, and would
lead possibly to a great scientific breakthrough.
However, Dr. Qian Xuesen,^ a leading physicist, and several other top researchers pointed out
that these signals were probably only secondary manifestations of an underlying information
carrier,
qi
(which means
air", "gas", "spirit", or "vital energy" in Chinese), and not the under-
lying carrier itself.4 As the research continued, scientists began to realize how weak and unstable
the EFHB effects were.
Having been isolated from the rest of the world for so long, Chinese
researchers were now independently re-discovering evidence for psychic phenomena
that had
been studied in the West for a hundred years.
In the course of these re-discoveries, Chinese
researchers became increasingly aware of the difficulties and complexities of the subject.
An unofficial preliminary organization, called the Chinese Human-Body Science Association
Preparatory Committee was
formed
in
1980
under
the
aegis
of Nature
Journal. 5
This
preparatory committee was nationwide in scope and sponsored two national conventions which
were held in Shanghai (1980) and Chongqing (1981). The conventions were somewhat informal
and were attended by amateur enthusiasts of differing backgrounds as well as by serious scien-
tists. To accommodate the large number of papers sent to NTs editors, publication of a monthly
newsletter, the EFHB Bulletin, was begun in 1981, staffed by employees from NJ.
Nevertheless,
most of the major research results in this phase were published in NJ.
The invited speech by Chen Xin and Mei Lei at the joint convention of the Parapsychological
Association and the Society for Psychical Research held in Cambridge, England, in 1982 (Chen
& Mei, 1983), was a good summary of Chinese parapsychological research activity at that time.6
Although some of the experiments reported in this early phase seemed naive;
still there were
many challenging or puzzling findings.
For example, results obtained with a group of blind
subjects in an experiment done by the EFHB Research Group of Bambu Traditional Chinese
Medicine College (1980) provided strong evidence of ESP.
It is interesting that in later, well controlled experiments, the "sheep-goat" and "decline" effects
were encountered by Chinese experimenters.
They also collected other evidence which, to a
degree, weighed against fraud as an explanation for the many successful experiments.
Although
there
is as yet no paper specifically dealing with
this evidence in a systematic fashion, some
arguments are as follows:
1. The accuracy of the ESP result or the effectiveness of the PK effort was found to vary inversely as the
^Transliterated as "Tsien Hsueh-Sen" in his early publications.
In transliteration, the Chinese phonetic symbols q, x, and 2 , for example, correspond in Mandarin to sounds that
cannot be represented by a single letter in English.
Expressed without benefit of the international phonetic alphabet,
when they appear at the beginning of a
syllable, these
letters
are approximtely equivalent
to English language
combinations ch, sh, and ts, respectively.
Thus, the approximate pronounciation of qi is "chec." The pronunciation of
persons names is further confused by the fact that some professionally established Chinese were allowed to keep their
previous English spellings after the 1950’s transliteration reform.
In P.R.C. all orgnizanons of whatever kind must be officially approved. Once approved, an organization is usually
provided financial support for its operational activities, depending on the general area of the subject and the size of the
membership.
An independent description of this period of research was given by H. E. Puthoff (1983) from SRI
based upon his visit to P.R.C. in 1981.
Participation in three ESP experiments with children in Hefei and Beijing was
reported by C. K. Jen (1983) of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory as a visiting professor to P.R.C.
in
1980-1981.
Dr. L.C. Teng, an Associate Director of the Fermi National Laboratory at Batavia, Illinois, participated in
a strikingly successful ESP experiment with a child subject while making a lecture stop at the Institute of Modem
Physics in Lanchou in 1980 (Teng,
1981). A detailed account of Chinese parapsychological activity in the years
1979-1982 will be found in Dong (1984), a Chinese-American lecturer and writer who studied Chinese occult beliefs
for several years and visited P.R.C. for six weeks in 198 1.
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length of time of the
trial once the subject(s) had reached a "favorable state."
For instance
it was
repeatedly observed in ESP tnals (typically recognizing "by ear" Chinese language characters sealed in
boxes), that when the children responded within a few minutes, perhaps 90% of their answers were
correct.
( Qi is coming", they would say).
In many cases they were able to respond in only 2 or 3
seconds, and, when this occurred, the results were nearly always right. However, if they could give only
a hesitating description after many minutes, the results were most often wrong - they were simply
guessing.
This is connary to the expectation that when more time is available, there will be a greater
chance of success in cheating.
2. Young girls, aged from 6-12, were considered the best ESP candidates, and a majority of the work in the
early phase was done with them. However, as they grew a little older or, more accurately, usually after
menstruation started, their ESP ability ceased. This is contrary to the rule that the more mature the child,
the more easily
it can deceive adults.
The observed fact
is explained by ancient phenomenological
qigong theory, which claims
that
"qi" can come from two sources:
"Yuan-qi", or primary "psvcho-
practice^
187
^ aCquired
3t bktfa 30(1 dlsaPPears 25 oue matures.
Qi is also gained through qigong
3. There can be interference with psi effort, and
it need not come from a hostile person.
For example
under the senior author’s direction four children, who were well known to him, were doing an ESP
demonstration experiment.
The experiment was proceeding with a high rate of success until a college
student in the audience who had studied qigong for several months but was still a beginner, decided to
attempt the announced task. The ESP of the children suddenly disappeared and they reported a feeling
of being confused and disturbed.
The children’s sudden failure seems contrary to the common sense
idea that hoaxers will continue their trick if it works well.
The dramatic public
interest in
psi and the resulting unprecedented large-scale inquiry by
academic scholars drew criticism soon after the movement began. The most famous attacker was
Mr. Yu Guangyuan, who was backed by many highly placed scientists. On the other hand, there
were other eminent scientists who defended the study of psi. They were represented by Dr. Qian
Xuesen (the previously mentioned physicist).
Two Eminent Scientists, the Great Debate,
and the Party’s Ruling
Mr. Yu Guangyuan, a social scientist, held many powerful positions.
He was, among other
dungs, vice-chairman of the Chinese Academy of Science, vice-director of the Academia Sinica’s
Science and Technology Committee, and director of the Institute of Marxism, Leninism
and
Thoughts of Mao Zedong.
It
is believed
that Yu’s opposition
to psi was a personal choice
reinforced by, agitation from some high-ranking close-minded scientists who could not consider
unexplained phenomena that might affect their fields of research.
Mr. Yu’s papers on psi, most of which were very long, appeared after May, 1981, in scholarly
journals such as Chinese Social Science and Philosophy Research.
His longest, of book length,
was scheduled for serialization in the monthly periodical Knowledge Is Power, (a popular science
magazine), beginning in October, 1981. During this time, Yu visited many major cities through-
out the country, giving lectures at university and government meetings in oppostion to psi and
sponsoring a small, short-lived periodical named Investigations ofthe EFHB.
Interestingly enough, Mr. Yu refused to participate in any psychic trials because, as he once
•
West ’
th* tem* Transcendental Meditation is often used for Chinese qigong, although
in
fact
this
is
Zt^re™Tw'
A
'T
18 PraCUCCd (WiTh “ mafly«“ is «* Pl^d) does not confora to the imjression
iuH
i^
^
tI°n mparts '
Q‘8°ng has noting to do with the modem New Age movement nor
thousand ^
c<luaIcd
.wl* Jndian^yoga. since qigong is independently oriented and was developed beginning several
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