Sima Nan

Sima Nan (Chinese: 司马南; born 1956) is a television pundit, social commentator, and journalist from the People's Republic of China. He is well known for his criticism of pseudoscience and supernatural phenomena, especially his opposition to qigong-related fraud. He is also active as a blogger and owns a television production company. According to Ian Johnson, Sima is "a longtime debunker of charlatans" who came to prominence following the country's ban of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, and who has won a national "hero of atheism" award.

Biography

Sima was born in Jilin, although Shandong is considered his ancestral home. Sima was originally a peasant and later a construction worker, and now works as a journalist and television producer. He was banned from writing for three years as a consequence of his support for the 1989 democracy movement, though he remains a member of the party.

Qigong

As a long time student and practitioner of Qigong, a Chinese meditative exercise, Sima believes in the physiological benefits of Qigong, but opposes trickery. He is a fervent opponent of mystic spiritual masters, and claims to be avant garde in his scepticism: "I was exposing the fake 'masters' before the party leadership cared about them," he said. Sima says that the government had been harassing him until 1999, when they switched their attention to the fake masters. Sima authored a book, A Secret Record of Pseudo-qigong, and also produced a television film, The Inside Story of Mysterious Gong.

Sima studied qigong while at college. After graduation, at the end of 1981, he was assigned to work for the central government in Beijing. His biography published in the Skeptical Inquirer states that he was influenced by the book Human Body Science (Chinese: 人体科学) by China’s leading physicist Qian Xuesen. As a result, he became involved in the Chinese Human Body Science Association, through which Sima had an opportunity to witness demonstrations of the prominent masters of the time, for whom he would run all sorts of errands. Sima says this included transferring title of property the masters received from grateful followers. By 1990, he became disillusioned with the deception practised by all the masters he had been in contact with; he had found the activities and behaviour of the organisation had little to do with serious research, but was in fact interested in the kudos of association with famous and influential people, and financial rewards. Sima says he is motivated purely by the satisfaction of unmasking cheats who he says prey on uneducated Chinese. His Skeptics biography alleged that, during the golden decade of qigong, the qigong network had sought to influence the highest level of the country’s leadership. Governmental departments set up qigong research and development units and invested large sums of money for that purpose; people of all socioeconomic levels were deceived.

Sima became a qigong master himself and worked as a leading qigong pundit in Beijing from 1990 to 1995. His work influenced China Central Television to pull qigong performances from the annual CCTV New Year's Gala from 1991 onwards. Sima held that qigong itself was scientific, but that other masters' claims of supernatural capabilities were super magic and deceitful tricks. As proof, he gave performances in front of large audiences exactly mirroring those by supposed supernormal-capable qigong masters. Hsiao says many believed Sima's performances, but were baffled, and some even regarded him as a high-level qigong master and tried to ask him for advice, yet he shocked his audiences when he disclosed it was not qigong nor supernormal capabilities, but magic. The media quoted him saying "I faked it! Who ever did it?" He would also embarrass other "masters" in the qigong field by attending their seminars and performances, exposing their fallacy in front of a posse of journalists who would follow him around — he would debate with qigong masters, ask difficult questions, thus raising doubts and causing problems for them. However, Hsiao says the media were favourable to Sima, stating they "consciously or unconsciously belittled qigong personnel who appeared to manifest supernormal capabilities." However, he was denounced as a traitor and expelled from the Human Body Science Association.

According to Christopher Hitchens, following Sima's criticism of qigong groups, he was denounced by Li Hongzhi, founder of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Li claimed to have secretly implanted a swastika (falun) in Sima's abdomen that "revolves in the wrong direction", and predicted that "[Sima] will be punished by lameness and blindness." Sima became very much in demand following the ban of Falun Gong, and went cross country to give lectures, only charging travel expenses. Sima said that although he supported the government's ban on Falun Gong because it is a fraud, he held reservations about the government's vitriolic campaign against the practice and hundreds of arrests. Sima believes that the government's campaign may have actually elevated the profile of what would otherwise have been an undistinguished group, thus giving free advertising to Li Hongzhi.

Later career

Since 1990, Sima Nan has collaborated with the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) and is now an investigator at a new branch of CAST, the Committee of Scientific Thinking, which he helped found. The agency will test claims of the paranormal, and has a standing offer of ¥ one million to anyone who can perform one act of "special ability" (i.e. paranormal) without cheating. American sceptic James Randi made an agreement with Sima that anyone whoever wins his million-US dollar JREF prize would automatically win Sima's million yuan. In 2000, The Globe and Mail reported that Sima had been asked by the Canadian government to assist them in combating illegal immigration from China: faced with many boat people arriving on Canada's west coast from China who claim persecution as members of Falun Gong in order to gain refugee status, the Canadians are hoping for help in assessing the applications. Sima referred to ufologists as "romantics", saying that those who alleged to have seen UFOs or have had extraterrestrial encounters, all lack hard evidence to prove their claims via objective and scientific methods.

In September 2008, following the Beijing Olympics, Sima was interviewed by the BBC, and defended Chinese censorship regulations and the media firewall on Falun Gong in mainland China. Sima said that the group disseminates material that is blatantly "anti-China" in nature and that the Chinese public has long grew irritated of Falun Gong rhetoric. However, Sima pointed out that, contrary to Western media perceptions, discussions on topics such as democracy and freedom take place regularly on the internet in China, and that he himself often engages in debates on these topics. In addition, Sima criticized the idea of "universal values" and challenged the notion that Western liberal democratic values should be regarded "universal".

See also

• He Zuoxiu

Further reading

• Buckley, Chris (29 July 2008). "China Party pundit spies battle outside Games arena". Reuters. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Hsiao, Guang. Breaking Through the Barriers of Darkness: Recognizing the Cult of Qigong for What It Is. ChinaforJesus.com. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Jing, A (19 June 2006). "Sima Nan exposes the past of Li Hongzhi". Facts.org.cn (China Association For Cultic Studies).
• 马国川 (13 June 2008). "网络上"震"出了一个司马南 (The Earthquake, The Internet and Sima Nan)". 经济观察报 (Economic Observer) vols. 45,46 (in Chinese). 新语丝. translation

External links

• Official blog of Sima Nan Template:Zh icon