Qigong's Strange History: From 1980s Superpower Labs to a 1999 Crackdown

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Qigong combines qi, often translated as vital energy or breath, with gong, meaning cultivation or work, the same root as in kung fu. It blends posture and movement, rhythmic breathing and meditative focus, in forms ranging from the dynamic Five Animals to the static holds of the Eight Pieces of Brocade, and its highest mastery is complete stillness. The techniques go back more than 2,000 years, but they were scattered across five traditions: traditional Chinese medicine, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and the martial arts, whose iron shirt and iron palm training aimed to withstand blows and break hard objects. The unified term qigong is modern. In 1949 Liu Guizhen and his associates established it as a clinical, therapeutic label stripped of religion for a modernizing state, and in 1957 he published the first public book on qigong therapy.

Qigong was banned during the cultural upheavals of the mid-1960s and rehabilitated in 1979 with help from prominent scientists, notably the aerospace engineer Qian Xuesen. The 1980s brought somatic science, with masters tested in labs for exceptional human functions such as telepathy, clairvoyance and photokinesis. By the 1990s an estimated 60 to 200 million people practiced it, cults formed around charismatic masters, and in 1999 the government launched a sweeping crackdown on groups including Falun Gong and Zhong Gong. Public practice is now regulated by the Chinese Health Qigong Association. A 2026 umbrella review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, covering 92 meta-analyses and 1,744 randomized controlled trials, reported high-certainty evidence for several health benefits.

• A newly classified condition called qigong deviation described dissociation, hallucinations and psychotic episodes linked to obsessive practice.
• Systematic reviews from about 2009 to 2015 criticized qigong studies for tiny samples, high bias and missing control groups.
• The 2026 review found traditional Chinese exercises improved physical function in knee osteoarthritis.
• It also reported better mental health in chronic neck pain, better sleep in fibromyalgia and higher bone mineral density in osteopenia or osteoporosis.
• Those benefits required at least 150 minutes of practice a week sustained for more than six months.