Online Mindfulness Courses are Booming in China, But Do They Actually Work?

Sha Liu (刘莎)

As meditation and mindfulness apps continue to surge in popularity, consumers struggle to get their money’s worth

Sitting in front of her laptop inside her Beijing apartment, Fang Yingqi is in a state of focused tranquility. Eyes closed and back straight, she takes deep breaths according to the soft guidance of the tutor’s voice floating through her computer’s speakers: “Inhale and exhale…feel the temperature difference when the air comes in…and out.”

This 15-minute meditation session is part of a 4,000-yuan online mindfulness course Fang signed up for earlier this year. Stressed by her job at a venture capital firm and preoccupied with family life, Fang enrolled in the course after seeing posts about the anxiety-reducing effects of mindfulness on social media. “I think it’s a way for people to learn how to nurture their ‘inner wisdom,’” she says. “I believe with long-term practice; it could help me to clarify my thoughts.”

Fang is not alone. Mindfulness and meditation content is booming online in China as middle-class urbanites jump on a trend that has spread to the country from the US in recent years. On Ximalaya FM, China’s largest podcast platform, mindfulness (正念) and meditation (冥想) courses have over 163,000 subscribers, with users listening to related content more than 10 million times. At the offices of large technology firms like Xiaomi and Didi, there are rooms devoted to mindfulness and meditation, as well as lectures and sharing sessions regarding techniques (like those you might find in Silicon Valley).

Interest spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic, with searches for “meditation” on Baidu’s search engine nearly doubling from January to March 2020, compared with the same period during the previous year.

From free five-minute videos online by amateur practitioners to 6,000-yuan months-long courses led by renowned psychology professors, mindfulness content has become standard practice for millions of Chinese looking to unwind. But with no industry standards for courses and no established qualifications for coaches, the quality of mindfulness products varies wildly. Likewise, courses often market themselves as a miracle cure for their clients’ psychological woes, leaving many disappointed when results don’t match those advertised, and leading some to even question the efficacy of mindfulness overall.

Many of the techniques of mindfulness, like meditation, have been practiced in China for centuries through Buddhism, which first came to the country from India around 2,000 years ago. But the modern kind that has swept China in recent years first gained popularity in the US in the 1990s after Jon Kabat-Zinn, an MIT-educated scientist, developed an eight-week stress reduction course for patients suffering from chronic pain.

There are two key elements to practicing mindfulness today in China, according to Liu Xinghua, a psychology professor at Peking University who designs commercial mindfulness courses for the public. “First you have to accept the present moment, regardless of pain or happiness,” Liu told Guangming Daily in August 2022. Then “be aware of your breathing. Don’t blame yourself if you get distracted; return to feel your breath, again and again.”

In fact, “Mindfulness training may be more applicable [than formal medical treatment] to enhance an individual’s well-being in Chinese culture,” Liu told Life Times in a 2019 interview, emphasizing the Buddhist roots of modern mindfulness practice which have been linked to Chinese culture for centuries.

But, as in other countries, many in China are taking up mindfulness in response to modern anxieties, stresses, or even depressive tendencies. In 2019, the World Health Organization estimated that 54 million people in China suffer from depression , and about 41 million suffer from anxiety disorders. But China has a shortage of certified mental health professionals —just 1.7 psychiatrists per 100,000 people compared with 12 per 100,000 in the US—so mindfulness courses are attractive for their accessibility online and low cost compared with private therapy.

“Unlike psychoanalysis that relies heavily on the professional level and experience of counselors, or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that requires personal discipline and monitoring, mindfulness-based stress reduction can be standardized into a ‘product’ that can be used by different people at the same time,” says Wang Sisi, a researcher at Pause Lab, an online mental health service provider with over 60,000 paid users that includes mindfulness courses in its products.

Wang, who holds a PhD in psychology from Peking University, helped design a 21-day online “Emotion Action Camp” for Pause Lab that guides beginners in mindfulness-based training, with the aim of reducing their stress and improving sleep quality.

In the camp, around 300 to 400 people (mainly women aged 25 to 35) pay around 600 yuan to receive recorded guidance and reading materials about recognizing and controlling their emotions. They keep diaries for the duration of the course, and also enter a group chat with tutors who answer their questions and encourage them to finish their daily practices.

A survey by the company last year found that most customers joined to raise their concentration levels, cope with pressure, ease negative emotions, and improve their acceptance of themselves. “Many live in first- and second-tier cities, are well-educated, and are in a period of career development but face pressure from themselves, interpersonal relationships, and their family,” says Pause Lab’s founder, Guo Tingting. “[They] want some tools for stress relief and self-growth.”

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