Traditional medicine and pseudoscience in China: a report of the second CSICOP delegation

In Part 1 of this report (SI, July/August 1996) we discussed the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and our observations of how it is practiced today in the People's Republic of China. We also described research we had observed during our visit to China that is attempting to identify those empirically verifiable portions of TCM that could be incorporated into scientific medical practice. This opportunity was afforded us by an invitation from the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) to visit various centers in China and to participate in a symposium on pseudoscience held in Beijing in June of 1995. In this article we address the broader topic of the growth of pseudoscience in China, and present additional observations of TCM as seen in centers in Shanghai.

The CAST Symposium

Part of our stay in Beijing was occupied by a seminar sponsored by CAST and the State Science and Technology Commission. There, Chinese scholars and physicians described the problems created by pseudoscience in their country. These authors and their fellow member of the delegation (Andrew Skolnick of the Journal of the American Medical Association) traded similar experiences from the U.S. and Canada. We had expected this to be one of the highlights of our trip, and we were not disappointed. CAST had assembled an impressive roster of social, physical, and medical scientists from various parts of China who described the obstacles that belief in Qigong(1) and some of the extreme claims of TCM have put in the way of their efforts to improve scientific literacy. From these presentations we achieved many insights that would otherwise have been much more speculative.

All Chinese speakers at the symposium made a clear distinction between "internal Qi" and "external Qi." The former equates roughly to what we would call "psychosomatic medicine"; while believers consider the latter to be a supernatural life force that, like psychokinesis, can affect matter outside one's body (believers refer to this as "special ability" or "extraordinary functions of the human body"). Belief in this dubious power was repeatedly defined at the symposium as China's major pseudoscience problem. Qigong was briefly outlawed during the cultural revolution (1966-1976) because it seemed too spiritual for the reigning Marxist materialists. It has since managed to stage a comeback by masquerading as a science. Qigong masters and their disciples routinely defraud the public with conjuring tricks and falsely present themselves as spiritual healers (Lin et al., in press). Honest practitioners of TCM eschew such deceptive practices, but they still adhere to the mystical notion that an imbalance of internal Qi energy underlies all illness. Many of the TCM doctors we interviewed still believe that specially gifted healers can use their external Qi to cure diseases by restoring the balance of a sufferer's internal Qi.

A few Chinese scientists we met maintained that although Qi is merely a metaphor, it is still a useful physiological abstraction (e.g., that the related concepts of Yin and Yang parallel modern scientific notions of endocrinologic and metabolic feedback mechanisms). They see this as a useful way to unite Eastern and Western medicine. Their more hard-nosed colleagues quietly dismissed Qi as only a philosophy, bearing no tangible relationship to modern physiology and medicine.(2)

The first group of speakers at the CAST symposium concentrated on external Qi. After Chinese investigators and the earlier CSICOP delegation had exposed several prominent Qigong masters as charlatans (Alcock et al. 1988), the government was persuaded to crack down on their ilk (some have gone underground, but many still continue to enjoy protection provided by high-level state officials). We did not determine the extent of the crackdown, but we learned that many Qigong masters are still active, especially in the countryside. We were also told that we would not be able to observe any masters or "special ability" children because they would no longer cooperate. This was disappointing but it is a tribute to our hosts' debunking efforts that local performers are now too wary of being caught, as they were when exposed by James Alcock, James "the Amazing" Randi, and the other members of the first CSICOP delegation.

Mr. Lin Zixin, the retired editor of China's Science and Technology Daily and a CSICOP Fellow, was one of our principal hosts. At the symposium, which he helped organize, he discussed the extent of belief in pseudoscience in China. He credited the 1988 CSICOP delegation with helping to tarnish the reputation of the Qigong "superman," Xiao, but admitted much remains to be done. He compared widely held superstitions about the power of external Qi in China to the beliefs that inspired the Japanese sect, "Aum Shinri Kyo" (the cult that attacked the Tokyo subway with nerve gas).

Mr. Lin, one of China's top scientific journalists and policy experts, described the extent of superstition in China as shameful and a threat to the nation's technological development. Scientific literacy is more important than ever as China tackles the arduous task of modernizing its economy, he said, but superstition continues to impede progress. Mr. Lin firmly reiterated his organization's support for CSICOP's efforts to combat pseudoscience worldwide.