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Approved For Release 2000 08/11 : CIA-RDP96-0079ZR000300420017-1 CHINA'S PSYCHIC LDREN advance copy JAN Approved For Release 2 HOW SATELLITES FOUND A LOST CITY 300420017-1
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Approved For Release 2000/08/11 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000300420017-1 CHINA'S PSYCHIC SAVANTS Is an ancient form of energy providing China's children with the miracle of second sight? BY MARCELLO TRUZZI E leven-year-old Tang Yu and his friend Chen Xiaoming were on their way home from school in the remote mountain village of Dazhu County when they be- gan to wrestle. Tang brushed against Chen's coat pocket, the story goes, and had the sudden vision of two Chinese symbols. He described the vivid symbols to Chen, who pulled a package of Flying Wild Goose cigarettes from his pocket. The label on the side of the package, the boys reported, consisted of the two symbols Tang Yu had "seen." Tang Yu was reluctant to share his discovery with Tang Kem- ing, his fifty-year-old peasant father. He knew his claim would sound like a lie. Instead, he began to play guessing games with the villagers. He asked them to write random characters on pieces of paper, crumple the paper into balls, and let him hold each ball in turn next to his ear. Tang then guessed the mes- sage within; his guesses, it was said, always proved right. Word of the boy spread beyond his small town to all of the Sichuan province in central China. Soon the region's science commission and its bureau of ed- ucation and culture had asked to examine Tang, and research- ers there confirmed his ability to identify words and colors on small wads of paper held to his ear. News reporters and awe- struck officials of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee quickly backed those results, and on March 11, 1979, this remarkable tale was published in the Sichuan Daily. Thus began what to- day is viewed -.- by both those in China and the West-as either a major breakthrough in parapsychology or a remarkable out- break of fraud and pathological science. Indeed, over the subsequent few months, as news of Tang's abilities spread throughout the People's Republic, more than ten other psychic children were supposedly discovered in Bei- PAINTING BY KEIKA NAKAJIMA Approved For Release 2000/08/11 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000300420017-1 ----------
- Boasting a skill that Chinese researchers had by now named extraordinary functions of the human body, these children claimed to do far more than read with their ears. They could, they said, decipher hidden messages with their fingers, palms, scalps, abdomens, feet, armpits, and buttocks. One nine-year-old girl even claimed she could read messages by touching the crumpled paper with the end of her pigtail. Reports began coming in about children with powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, X-ray vision, and psychokinesis. The typical child was between the ages of nine and fourteen, but a few were as young as four or as old as twenty-five; and it was estimated by Feng Hua, a traditional Chinese physician, that there were about 2,000 such gifted children within the Chinese population of 1 billion. By early 1980 these remarkable children had made their way to the pages of China's prestigious Nature Journal. And that Febru- ary the surge of interest prompted Nature Journal to sponsor a huge conference-the First Science Symposium on the Extraordi- nary Function of the Human Body-for par- ticipants from more than 20 colleges and medical schools. The proceedings were filmed by the Shanghai Science and Edu- cation Studio, and the film, called Do You Believe It?, was shown over national televi- sion to millions of Chinese. As publicity mounted, interest spread be- yond the mainland to Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. And it didn't take long for the news to pique the interest of parapsycholo- gists throughout the West. Because West- ern researchers are less inclined to associ- ate such abilities with the body, though, they relabeled the supposed phenomenon ex- ceptional human functions (EHF). I first learned of EHF from a Los Angeles Times article. Chinese scientists were "baf- fled by studies of children who can 'see' ob- jects hidden in boxes, read Chinese char- acters tucked under their armpits, and identify colors without using their eyes." As a sociologist of science at Eastern Michigan University and director of the independent Center for Scientific Anomalies Research, I was anxious to investigate further. Through my center's many informants, I was able to obtain a steady stream of Chinese articles translated by the American government. This documentation, often terribly vague in its detail and usually opaquely translated by computers, demonstrated that Chinese sci- entists were serious about something that seemed quite preposterous. Before beginning an active investigation of my own, I decided to try to glean a bit of understanding from the past. Paranormal in- cidents, I soon learned, were a significant part of China's mythology. In one ancient parable, for instance, a mystic named Kang Gang-Zi was reputed to have seen and heard without using his eyes or ears. In an- other legend, two mediums were called upon to identify the grave of a princess; they are said to have given an accurate, clairvoyant These ancient myths, derived from the first few centuries of the millennium, have set the tone for Chinese folklore and beliefs ever since. But despite this rich tradition, the Marxist takeover in 1949 put a clamp on be- lief in the supernatural. China's official crit- ics, in fact, denounced parapsychology as superstitious and mystical nonsense, label- ing it "religion without the cross." They even accused the United States and the Soviet Union of vigorously promoting psychic phe- nomena to distract their citizens from the world's true crises. A softer line didn't emerge until early 1980, around the time of the Nature Journal con- ference. In a story on "sorcery, witchcraft, and fortune-telling," The Beijing Review conceded that "so long as these activities do not affect the political and productive ac- tivities of the collective, the government will not prevent them by administrative means." In other words, according to astute China watcher Martin Ebon, the government was 6A group from the Beijing Teacher Training Institute announced that its young charges could cause an operating radio transmitter to disappear from one room and show up in another. admitting that perhaps some of the phe- nomena could be "scientifically observed, traced, controlled, recorded, manipulated, or provoked." Chinese scientists would be allowed to prove what was superstition and what was not. Given the go-ahead, a number of Chinese scientists leapt to action. Researchers Chen . Shouliang and He Muyan, of Beijing Univer- sity, studied two sisters-Wang Qiang, thir- teen, and Wang Bin, eleven. In a series of eight tests, the girls placed paper with Chi- nese symbols under their armpits; in 109 subsequent tests, the messages were sealed in special envelopes. According to scien- tists testing the girls, the subjects scored correctly about 85 percent of the time-and they did not cheat. In another experiment, conducted by Xu Xinfang and his group at Anhui Normal Uni- versity, a boy and a girl said to have EHF reportedly guessed not only hidden mes- sages but also the color of the pencil used to write each message. The scientists said the children scored correctly 91 percent of the time, but the subjects could not identify their targets in total darkness. The result. in May 1981, was the Second Sci- ence Symposium on the Extraordinary Function of the Human Body. According to reports arriving at my Michigan office, that conference was spectacular. A special physics research team from the High En- ergy Institute announced that children with EHF could expose film in lightproof con- lainers. When engaged in such activity, moreover, the children seemed to emit light quanta and electrical waves that could be picked up with special biodelectors. A group from the Beijing Teacher Training Institute announced that their young charges could cause an operating radio transmitter to dis- appear from one room and show up in an- other. Yet another group claimed that a twelve-year-old girl could use psychokine- sis to move the hands of a watch. The stories seemed to go on forever. But the most remarkable news to come from that meeting was the deep involvement of Qian Xue Sen, known in China as the Father of the Missile. Before returning to China in 1955, Qian had been the Goddard Professor of Jet Propulsion at Caltech and the director of the rocket section of the U.S. National Defense Scientific Board. Thanks to Qian, by 1980 China had successfully launched 12 satel- lites and fired an intercontinental ballistic missile 10,000 kilometers. His work, in fact, would soon make China the third nation to send men into space. Qian, however, had recently become a passionate leader in the field of EHF. And to enthralled scientists, his support made a tremendous difference. "Every day we have new discoveries, " he told his followers. "This reminds us of the atmosphere when Ein- stein's theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were introduced onto the stage of modern science." Invoking the name of Einstein was oddly appropriate, for those in China likened Qian's influence to Einstein's influence in backing the atom bomb during World War II. The great space-scientist-turned-EHF-enthusi- ast, in fact, had reportedly secured the pri- vate support of Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang and the public approval of the renowned Chairman Hu Yao Bang. The reports, coming mostly from Defense Department translations and the journal Psi Research, seemed to get more incredible by the day. So early in 1981, 1 was thrilled to get a call from my friend Stanley Krippner, dean of the graduate school at the Saybrook Institute, in San Francisco. Krippner, best known for his work on te- lepathy during dreams, is one of the most respected-and skeptical --- parapsycholo- gists in the United States. His trips to the Soviet bloc have produced a fount of infor- mation on psychic research there; so it was no wonder that in light of recent reports, he was planning a trip to China. As it turned out, Krippner had planned his two-week tour with the help of an efferves- cent Chinese woman named Shuyin L. Mar, of the Savant Association, in Arlington, Vir- ginia. Mar was firmly convinced that EHF was These experiments and a slew of others description ofbegu"For Release 2000/08/11 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000300420017-1 64
ApprovedForRelease2000108/11CLARDP96Q0792RQQQ300420017 there we found legitimate. Krippner's group to meet with China's most committed EHF researchers and their treas- ured child savants. Krippner told me that he had already in- vited physicist Harold Puthoff, of SRI Inter- national, physicians J. Tashof Bernton and Kenneth Zirinsky. Los Angeles psychologist Thelma Moss: some graduate students from Saybrook: and others. But he was still in need of someone like me, an utter skeptic trained as a magician --- a professional who knew just how sleight of hand could be used to simu- late ESP. I accepted his invitation gratefully. delighted by the chance to get a firsthand look at China's newest craze. We left that October, arriving in Beijing on the eighteenth. The thing that struck me most was the looseness of things. The airport was nearly empty, practically a mausoleum. And our lodgings, named the Friendship Hotel in honor of the once-great bond between China and the Soviet Union, was a strange amal- gam of the two cultures. It was a monstrous, Soviet-like structure, something you might find in the middle of Moscow, but with a Chi- nese roof. The elaborate inner lobby had a carpet patterned with little peace doves, and the rooms had large mattresses atop mas- sive Russian beds. In deference to the Chi- nese, there was an impressive Oriental gar- den out back. It was in the conference room of the Friendship that we had our first series of meetings with the Chinese. The resident lu- minaries, mostly from Beijing Medical Col- lege, Beijing University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, first explained the re- lationship between EHF and qi (chee). According to the researchers, qi is psychic energy that runs through the body, just as blood runs through the arteries and veins. The pathways through which qi travels are essentially points of high electrical conduc- tivity; when the pathways are in repair and the qi is flowing smoothly, an individual stays healthy and strong. Acupuncture needles, the scientists said, stimulate the main qi channels. And a breathing exercise called qigong (chee-gong) prevents the channels from getting clogged. As for EHF, why, children reading mes- sages with their armpits are simply tapping a little-explored tactile sense: They are gleaning messages through the skin, which is laced with channels and energized by the power of qi. I told the researchers that as far as I could see, qi might not exist and qigong might be nothing more than a Chinese version of ordinary aerobics. But the Chinese persisted. People known as qigong masters, I was told, were capable of extraordinary physical feats, including the ability to emerge unscathed when struck on the bare chest with a huge stone slab or the blade of a sword. Moreover, I was told, out of 3,100 chronically ill patients practicing qigong from three to five years, 25 percent recovered completely, 44 percent showed marked improvement, and 22 percent showed machine that produced the q energy artifi- cially. she had. she said, already used it to cure her patients of cancer, paralysis. high blood pressure, and heart disease. After three days of such discussion, we were allowed to meet the savants. The chil- dren -- four young girls-entered the hotel, kicking off what seemed like a three-ring cir- cus. Fifty researchers were milling around. and we were all so excited that we started our tests right there in the lobby. First the Chinese researchers gave the girls folded pieces of paper marked with symbols. Then they were given canisters that we had filled and sealed in the United States. In both in- stances, they were to guess the contents within. But our experiments were foiled by the chaos. Even Mar. our translator, seemed to complicate the situation. She was so set on seeing the girls succeed that it was hard to trust what she did. And while we were trying to impose tighter controls, she was jabbering away in Chinese. For all we knew, @Qigong masters, I was told, were capable of extraordinary physical feats, including the ability to emerge unscathed when struck on the chest with the blade of a sword. she may have been revealing the answers. When we finally did move into the confer- ence room for a formal demonstration, it hardly mattered. The children were so fidg- ety and restless, they couldn't help but ma- nipulate the wads of paper; any skilled con- jurer would have been able to use that technique to take a peek. Despite the chance for cheating, though, the girls didn't score a single hit. Finally. Krippner stood a few yards away from them and drew a big red star, perhaps the most pervasive symbol in all of China. Then he folded his paper, handed it over, and one girl got the answer right. Later on, I took him aside. "Stan, why did you do that?" I asked. "The girls probably saw your red pen. And it would have been simple for them to trace the movement of your hand." "Of course I realized the problems." Krippner said. "But the girls and our hosts seemed so embarrassed. I was just trying to end the session on a friendly note." It was on that friendly note that we left for Xian, the Chinese city best known for the life- size terra-cotta army now being unearthed Ourselves in the meager three-room apart- ment of three children said to possess EHF. They claimed they could psychically break a match or needle scaled in a small con- lainer. And of course they could intuit mes- sages on crumpled paper through the channels of their skin. With 25 of us sitting in the small front room, the mother conducted the test herself. using a method that was amazingly crude. She merely held up playing cards and asked the children to identify them. Now, any cheating child could have scored hit after hit, but to my surprise, these children got every an- swer wrong, and that included the youngest girl, who at one point actually left the room and took the target card with her. Our next target was Shanghai. We left on a shuddering turboprop filled with a con- vention of Americans from the Midwest, and en route we prayed for survival. We did, of course, touch down, only to find that our troubles had barely begun. We had planned a series of meetings with the Nature Journal staff, Shanghai Univer- sity professors interested in EHF, and faculty at the Science and Technology Association. But when we got to our hotel, we learned that the meetings had been canceled. While we were in Xian, it seems, Yu Guang Yuan, vice-chairman of the Chinese Acad- emy of Sciences and vice-director of the In- stitute of Marxism, Leninism, and Thoughts of Mao Tse-tung, had attacked parapsy- chology in the press. Writing in the People's Daily, he denounced EHF research as "non- sense and superstition." His article specifi- cally criticized He Chongyan, publisher of Nature Journal and one of Mar's main con- tacts in China. Moreover, he organized a committee called the EHF Investigation and Liaison Unit. Its purpose: to expose decep- tion in claims of the paranormal. With the purge of the Cultural Revolution fresh in everyone's mind, EHF researchers felt compelled to fade into the woodwork. Nonetheless, some of the more enthusiastic made quiet visits to our hotel. Of specific interest were the claims of a husband-and- wife team named Zhu Romlong and Zhu Yi- yi, both of Nature Journal. They said that children with EHF emitted infrared radiation, unusual brain waves, and magnetic signals. These same children reported a flashing of the target image on the forehead before it hit. The Zhus also told us about a four-and- a-half-year-old who could solve complex math problems but only when his father was in the room. And they mentioned another young boy who "peered" inside the womb of a pregnant woman, only to announce that the fetus had no head. According to the Zhus, that diagnosis proved correct. These incredible tales went on and on, until I realized that the Zhus had little scientific or conceptual sophistication. That evening, nonetheless, we all went to the Zhus EHF demonstration. There I found four young sa- vants, three girls and one boy, primly seated on a sofa. Once again, their goal was to read their armpits. For the Bided messages with the1 ApprovedFor Release 2006708/P CIA-RDP96-00792R0003 66 OMNÍ CONTINUED ON PAGE 78
Approved For Release 2000/08/11 : CIA-RDP96-007928000300420017hildren to the . from many laboratories stead- : Margulis's idoas. she began · vindication. receiving plaudits wading scientists as Lewis volutionist Stephen Jay Gould. Thomas calls her 1981 book ad Cell Evolution "an indisput- · the literature of science a vol- o turn out. one day hence, to be tem." cell-symbiosis theory seems to ward acceptance. And in 1983, !: cted to the National Academy of the research "establishment." It's gulis is tempering her views. It's .: scientific community seems to closer to her notion that in evolu- osis may be as important as ~ She's concerned, because her metimes misinterpreted. at it gets Pollyannaish," she says. in versus cooperation-these social meaning. But it's not really s either red in tooth and claw or for the good of groups. These nadequate to describe the ge- bolic, and behavioral interactions :nisms.". and son Dorion have written a ed The Expanding Microcosm Joks). 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Earth Satellite Corp .: page ·man R Lightloot/Photo Researchers: page 30 " Rogers/Black Star; page 31 top, The Bettmann age 31 bottom, James Sugar Black Star, page : J Krasemann/Peter Arnold: page 33 top, @Len ... 33 bottom, Dan McCoy/Rainbow, page 34, ... Magnum, page 35 bottom, David Scharf/ .: page 36 top, Ray Ell:s'Photo Researchers; om Jelt Rotman/Peter Arnold. page 40, Manfred Arnold: page 49, James Bell'Photo Research- Michael Abbey/Photo Researchers: page 54 " op page 54 bottom, Cosimo: page 55 top, age 55 middle. Micheal Simpson, page 55 Coleman, page 56 1op. Dan Morrill: page 56 Dick Frank Studios. Inc Client The Garrett page 56 bottom, Dan Morrilt page 57 1op, age 57 middle, Pete Turner page 57 bottom, Hoff. page 58 1op. Gene Coloman page 58 anson. page 58 bottom, Robert M Kloepper! 5 page 59 top, Ron Kimball. page 59 middle. ."g page 59 bottom, Charles J Omnico page Courtesy of Roland Wilkerson Advertising: an Catherine. page 86 top. Movie Still Ar. :. 6 bottom. i 1984 Nea' Davis. page 87 top. page 87 bottom, Larry Palubecki page 88 Archives, page 88 bottom, The Bellmann :12. Chris Newber: page 116, NASA Science ·searchers, pages 116, 117, Sulivan Studios PSYCHIC COLTPUF OTROV PAGE 66 first time in two weeks. I saw these children score several hits But with Mrs Zhu some- times blocking our view of them, these fidg- eting youngsters had ample opportunity to cheat Moreover, one girl given a specially sealed container prepared by us returned it with the seal undone. As the trip drew to an end, those in our group agreed that we had seen no convinc- ing evidence of EHF. When we confronted our Chinese colleagues with these findings, they insisted that we were basing our judg- ment on mere demonstrations as opposed to valid laboratory experiments. Of course, children under pressure could cheat some- times, they claimed. But that did not mean that all children cheated all the time. "Our new research aborts the possibility of trick- ery." He Chongyan told us. "It concentrates on mechanisms and explanations." We 'replied that until we could replicate these experiments in the West. we would have to give them low evidential weight. Though much has happened since we left China. that is still where we stand. On February 24, 1982. China's Academy of Sciences sponsored a public hearing on EHF Reported cases were analyzed, and in an extensive review. experts concluded that the great majority of them were unfounded. The following day. People's Daily summa- rized the criticisms and reviewed the past several years of reports. It too concluded that there was no evidence for the claims. Though the attempt to discredit EHF has been partially successful. matters remain far from resolved. As China's official English- language publication. China Reconstructs, put it, "The debate goes on. and experimen- tation continues regarding what has be- come a highly emotional issue." Soon after the Chinese Academy of Sci- ences issued its decree, for instance, Chen Hsin, vice-director of the Institute of Aero- space Medico-Engineering, and Mei Lei, vice-director of the Space Life-Science Commission, attended a joint meeting of the Parapsychological Association and the So- ciety for Psychical Research, in Cambridge, England. There they described their interest in using EHF for communication in space and told us that qigong was now part of their as- tronauts' training program. They also out- lined the current state of Chinese parapsy- chological experimentation, claiming ex- traordinary controls against fraud. "Under strictly controlled experimental conditions," they said, "the authenticity of recognizing characters with the ears was verified. The rate of absolutely correct iden- tifications was greater than eighty percent." These claims so far exceed those of most Western parapsychologists that even those who have little doubt about the existence of ESP and psychokinesis say the reports seem too good to be true. Psychologist John Be- loff, a past president of the Parapsycholog- West for testing. Thus far, that has not happened. Accord- ing to Paul Dong, author of The Four Major Mysteries of Mainland China, the Commu- nist party. angered by the constant wran- gles, ordered parapsychologists to conduct their research quietly. They wanted no pa- pers, no TV shows, and no more fights. Still, the rumors persist. Dong's sources say that thousands of psychic children have recently come out of the woodwork. And these newly discovered children, no longer content just to read messages with their armpits, now congregate in groups, where leaders help them use qi to break boards. According to a newspaper report from late 1984, Dr. Lin Hosheng, of Shanghai's Insti- tute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, can al- legedly use qi energy to move a ball and make a man whirl back and forth. Whether EHF is real or whether we are wit- nessing an extraordinary episode in collec- tive error, sociologists of science have much to learn from these remarkable events. If EHF turns out to be a reality, the obvious question will be why it took so long for sci- entists to become convinced. One answer might come from my colleague Ron Wes- trum, a sociologist of science at Eastern Michigan University. Westrum has spent years studying what he calls hidden events --- phenomena once denied by orthodox sci- ence but today accepted as real. As late as the nineteenth century, for instance, scien- tists vehemently declared that meteorites could not have originated in space. Today we know that they do. It is possible that EHF falls into a similar category. It is, of course, far more likely that EHF will be rejected, forcing us to ask why so many scientists currently accept it as valid. One reason may be that Chinese science is a rel- atively closed system, isolated from the rest of the world by a language barrier and ide- ological pressures. As psychologist Irving Janis points out in Victims of Groupthink: The Psychological Study of Foreign Policy De- cisions and Fiascoes, closed systems and strong ties between people tend to produce and to maintain conformity. Given China's in- sulation from the West, its ancient intellec- tual traditions, and its dependence on key scientific leaders like Qian, the EHF phe- nomenon seems understandable. But as in- teraction between China and the West in- creases, more critical appraisal may be given to the EHF studies now available. Most philosophers of science would agree that there is no sharp line separating sci- ence from pseudoscience. The reality of EHF may be highly improbable, but science can- not tell us that it is absolutely impossible. As Carl Sagan says, the best antidote for pseu- doscience is more and better science. Only further controlled demonstrations will dem- onstrate whether EHF is real or nonsense. If EHF is valid after all, the payoff would be immense. As professor Dong Taihe, of Zhe- jiang University, observes, "A whole new branch of science could just be waiting to . Approved For Release 2000908/CARD96-0079202001-1 Placed If you'd like RE( kno Mr. oper disti WI him was wha Har sorr But whi gav