BEIJING -- Five years ago, Xu Xiaoxue decided to leave her husband and make a life of her own. So she left the southern town of Wuxi and headed north to Beijing to seek her fame and fortune as a superhuman.


Now, armed with a client list of top Chinese leaders, plus a finely honed business sense, Xu, 41, has entered the burgeoning ranks of Chinese who make their living by claiming supernatural abilities. Her advertised skills: X-ray vision, faith healing and fortune telling.


This new class of Chinese entrepreneurs claims fantastic skills that they're willing to demonstrate or teach for a price. A soldier in the People's Liberation Army claims he can use special energies to throw needles 30 meters at high speeds and pierce 5 millimeters of glass. China's most famous superman, Zhang Baosheng, claims he can move objects through sheer concentration -- in addition, of course, to X-ray vision and miraculous powers to heal.


In most Western countries, people claiming these powers would be consigned to the supermarket tabloids, but in increasingly freewheeling China, they are respected, wealthy figures. Communist Party leaders seek their help, serious newspapers laud their miraculous powers and the superhumans sell books and videos.


Even China's supreme leader, Deng Xiaoping, is said to use superman Zhang's services. Deng, who is in declining health and unable to walk, was rumored to have been resuscitated from a coma by Zhang.


Although they treat top leaders, superhumans have become something of an embarrassment to Chinese authorities, who recently issued a circular calling for government agencies to curb the rise of "feudal superstition." Despite a rebirth of religion and capitalism, this is still a country run by a Communist Party convinced that science, not magical powers, is the way to solve problems.


"People are horrified by growing superstitious and ignorant practices as well as anti-scientific and pseudoscientific activities that are turning up," says the circular issued by the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee. "The origin of superstition is poverty, and only scientific knowledge can eliminate poverty."


That analysis, of course, tells only part of the story. Superstition is indeed on the rise -- the official Enlightenment Daily newspaper claims that 5 million people earn a living in China as fortune-tellers, a practice that was banned 15 years ago -- but people seem anything but horrified by it. And as for poverty being superstition's cause, the self-proclaimed superhumans have become more popular as the Chinese have become richer.


Lu Jianhua, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says people have turned to the superhumans as lives have become more complicated.


"People like the idea of being something special, or having an edge against others. It gives a feeling of security," Lu said. "On the whole, it's relatively harmless and probably will go away when people become better educated."


Significant, too, is that the superhumans don't challenge one-party rule: Authorities have cracked down hard on dissent and some religious activities, but people who claim supernatural abilities do not band together and do not threaten authority.


Indeed, the most important reason for the government's tolerance of the superhumans may be that many of China's aging leaders have hired these miracle workers to postpone the ultimate "meeting with Marx."Driving through Beijing with Xu, for example, can be a lesson in the Communist Party's hierarchy. Having taken no oath to protect her clients' privacy, she happily names the party leaders she has treated: former Communist Party General Secretary Hua Guofeng; Marshall Nie Rongzhen, the father of China's A-bomb program; Yang Dezhi, 84, former vice minister of defense; and Peng Chong, 80, former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.


Xu bristles at the thought of being considered a fraud. She says her charges are modest, just a few dollars per customer, because she's committed to helping humanity -- although foreigners seem to be exempt from this humanism. They must pay $100 per visit.


But none of her skills seemed to work when she tried treating a foreign visitor for nearsightedness. Her magic wand seemed ineffective, as did her trademark silver raincoat and red hat.


She begged forgiveness, saying her powers were weak because she hadn't eaten a good breakfast.