Culture : Filling a Void With ‘Qigong’ in China : Millions have turned to the practice, which mixes exercise and meditation. Officials fear unpredictable political consequences.

The hypnotic voice of qigong master Zhang Ruming floated through a hall packed wall-to-wall with 300 working-class Beijing residents.

“The lotus flower endlessly grows,” Zhang intoned. “The lotus flower envelops you. Think, ‘I am the lotus flower. The lotus flower is me. . . . The lotus flower is all of nature.’ ”

Everyone seemed lost in quiet meditation on the soothing words, rich in Buddhist imagery. But no one considered this a religious meeting, at least not openly.

Those in the crowd had come in the belief that they could receive healing benefits of the master’s qi --the vital energy of life. They believed that he had the gong-- the skill--to control this force and impart it to them. At the start of the meeting, a dozen people had offered testimonials to Zhang’s healing power.

The gathering reflected an explosion of interest in qigong (pronounced CHEE-goong), a blend of Chinese medicine, Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, magicians’ tricks and traditional exercises that is quickly expanding to fill a deep spiritual void in Chinese life.

Authorities here view the phenomenon with a nervous mixture of respect and fear. Qigong is not a political force. But it pulls people together in loose associations that are not government-controlled. Some observers believe that it could ultimately challenge the Communist Party’s wide-ranging grip on social life and that this, in turn, could have unpredictable political consequences.

It is generally estimated that there now are at least 60 million practitioners, up from a few hundred thousand a decade ago.

“The strongest organizations in China today, after the Communist Party, are the rapidly growing qigong associations,” the respected Hong Kong-based China-watching magazine Contemporary recently declared.

Traditional religion in China was suppressed by the late Chairman Mao Tse-tung, who instilled in its place a fanatical belief in his own power. Then, Deng Xiaoping replaced the cult of Maoism with economic reforms, promoting a widespread conviction that China was on the road to prosperity.

But Deng’s own prestige, and that of the Communist Party over which he presides, was among the casualties last year when the People’s Liberation Army fired on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing. People were left with nothing to believe in. Especially in the cities, where disillusionment struck deepest, many are turning to qigong.

At its most fundamental level, qigong is based on deep-breathing exercises. These can be used simply to keep fit. They also are used in meditation and for the concentration of energy that medical qigong claims can be achieved.

The exercises themselves, which fit into a well-established pattern of morning calisthenics, enjoy official approval. Performances of qigong tricks, such as breaking bricks with one’s head, are routinely offered as public entertainment.

Respected physicians sometimes credit qigong with healing powers. An international symposium on qigong and health will be held in Beijing in November. It is widely believed that senior leader Deng, 86, is himself treated by a qigong master. Some Chinese say this explains why he has lived so long.

But the Chinese media have printed articles warning of qigong’s dangers, including risks of hallucination and mental breakdown. As part of a broad effort to bring qigong activities under official supervision, sweeps have recently been made of exercise classes in public parks, with instructors required to register their names.

Qigong gatherings of more than 1,000 were banned after several 1988 rallies in Beijing drew up to 15,000 frenzied participants who writhed, screamed, laughed or cried as masters projected qi upon them. But this ban failed to stop qigong’s spread.

The official newspaper, the China Daily, reported in August that there are now 200,000 to 300,000 adherents of qigong in Beijing alone, with 23 institutions conducting teaching or research into the discipline. Only one of these centers had registered with the proper authorities, the article complained. In addition, it said, there are more than 200 “guidance centers” with more than 600 instructors in public places such as parks.

The Beijing Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine has launched a program to license all medical-related qigong activities, and “anyone working in breach of the rules would be severely punished,” the article said.

The report also stated that eight medical qigong clinics have already been ordered to close this year, and two individuals “have been detained . . . on charges of swindling.”

Fears of political instability have helped prompt such assertions of government control.

“ Qigong is a popular folk religion with very strong indigenous roots,” Stan Rosen, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California, commented during a recent visit to Beijing. “With no other belief system left in China, it fills a vacuum. It can spread extremely rapidly in a situation where people don’t believe in the government. I think that’s why the government is afraid of it.”

Rosen noted that several episodes in Chinese history provide precedents for growth of powerful mass movements based on religious or quasi-magical beliefs.

Among the most famous of these was the so-called Boxer Rebellion of 1900, an anti-foreign uprising launched by members of a secret society that practiced a discipline called “Boxing of Righteousness and Harmony.” Practitioners believed that Taoist magic made them invulnerable to foreign bullets.

“The Boxers thought they were invincible,” Rosen noted. “The qigong people have a similar belief. The qigong people believe anything is possible as far as curing illness. . . . At a time when the government is emphasizing stability above all else, these kinds of movements are very dangerous. The dissatisfaction is so strong, and the lack of control is so obvious now, there’s fertile ground for something like qigong to take root.”

Qigong practitioners generally do not deal with political issues, however, and even religious aspects are usually ignored or downplayed. While acknowledging that the discipline has roots in Buddhism and Taoism, most masters insist that in China today, qigong is primarily a science and a theory of life.

“ Qigong has something to do with religion, but there is a difference between the two,” said Chen Linfeng, a qigong master who founded a branch of the discipline called Huiliangong (“The Skill of Wisdom and the Lotus”).

“ Qigong is just a name, while its contents are varied,” Chen said. “For instance, qigong can keep people fit, which is something on the surface. It can be used to cure patients, which is something deeper. It can also produce new wisdom. That is the deepest aspect. Qigong is not a religion, but a kind of theory. It is the theory of wisdom.”

Chen added that in his view, Buddhist meditation, the Taoist search for immortality, Christian prayer and Hindu yoga all incorporate elements of qigong. He also noted that qigong has developed against a background of government promises of religious freedom made when China’s economic reform program was launched in 1978.

Chen’s own life provides a glimpse into a shrouded world of mystics that survived the violent anti-religion campaigns of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Born in 1962, Chen learned his art growing up in the countryside. At the age of 5, he started learning qigong exercises from his father. A few years later, he said, there rose in his mind the image of a bearded old man, a master who could teach him much more. Then one day he met a Buddhist monk, a faith healer, “who looked exactly the same as I imagined,” he said.

“I became his last pupil,” Chen said. “I told him I wanted to cure patients (like he did). . . . He asked me to set my mind to saving all living creatures from a sea of bitterness.”

The year that the Cultural Revolution ended, Chen, still only 14, began his own career as a faith healer, he said. In recent years he has focused on spreading knowledge of qigong rather than offering cures.

“ Qigong is a way to wake up people,” he said. “If all of society attains a correct understanding of things, then power struggles and wars will disappear. This is because you are me and I am you. Someone older is my father or my elder brother, those younger are my little brothers, just like a family. All of society will be equal, as in the Buddhist Paradise.”

At the opposite end of the spectrum from such philosophical musings is qigong entertainment based on alleged supernatural powers.

Yuan Xiyin of Beijing’s Orient Qigong Troupe put on such a performance at a recent variety show, balancing his body on a large metal trident with the sharply pointed middle prong pressed against his stomach. The stunt began with the claim that should Yuan lack true qigong, he would surely be hurt.

Such tricks contribute to an atmosphere in which most Chinese credit qigong with capabilities unexplained by modern science. But they also provoke a backlash.

The newspaper “Health News” recently ran an expose of qigong stunts such as walking on balloons or sending shocks of electricity through people’s bodies. Fu Weizhong, a qigong master, was quoted as explaining that these performances depend on mechanical principles or hidden equipment.

“ Qigong is a treasure of the Chinese nation, but now it has become a tool used by quacks and swindlers,” Fu lamented.

Most adherents of qigong are not too interested either in philosophy or stunts. They have aches or illnesses, and they want cures.

“I have tumors all over my body, which relate to each other just like a net, but since I’ve come to this course my neck has become flexible and my back pains are relieved,” said a middle-aged woman at Zhang’s qigong meeting.

A young man in the crowd credited Zhang’s power with curing him of a hacking cough. A paraplegic man, hope in his voice, said that attendance enabled him first to feel pain and tingling in his legs, then a sensation as if worms were climbing up his body.

Zhang claims that in a clinical study, his type of qigong eliminated gallstones in more than 30 out of 50 patients.

He explained the treatment this way: “Qigong masters conduct their brain waves to patients, who are asked to lie down in a state of complete physical and spiritual relaxation. . . . The energy comes from the hands and brains of the qigong masters.”

Such techniques “are part of Chinese traditional medical treatment,” Zhang said. “But people usually acknowledge only herbal medicine and acupuncture. Now we should restore another part, that is qigong. “

Qigong is also credited with more mundane benefits in daily life.

Wei Qing, a young amateur photographer, said she gets fresh ideas for pictures by reading a book of qigong poetry called “Daily Songs of Spiritual Linkage.” Like some prayer guides in the United States, this book has one poem for each day of the calendar year.

Long Ying, creator of these songs, said they are based on five mystical words that his father and grandfather learned decades ago from a Taoist monk, who used them in treating Communist guerrillas injured in battle with Japanese troops.

“The seriously wounded could avoid death, ease their pain and restore their health,” Long said. “My ancestors wrote down these things.”

For those who must know how or why, there is no real answer.

“ Qigong, this science, is a profound mystery,” Zhang declared to his enraptured audience. “Many things cannot be explained.”