That, I can’t say. I have no experience with it and no knowledge of how or if it works. My admittedly limited understanding of chi comes from reading Chinese and Japanese philosophy and the study of martial arts, and even there, skepticism is still your friend. If someone tells me he’s about to knock me down without touching me by “directing energy at me,” he’s either full of shit or he’s about to hit me with a bat. 
Remember, that a lot of people who seem to be frauds are actually frauds to themselves. I practice Chinese martial arts and we had an instructor come in for a guest lecture. Afterwards he demonstrated how the strength of the martial art when one is proficient. He had me position my arm so the upper arm was vertical and the lower arm stuck straight out in front of me. He asked me to hold that position as well as I could while he pushed down on my arm. He then waved his hand in front of me and repested the experiment, but my arm moved down when he pushed it!
He then asked me how he was able to push my arm down the second time. I was searching for what I thought would be the right answer, something to do with leverage perhaps? I couldn’t think of anything so I gave the obvious answer: Because he pushed harder.
He didn’t like that so we repeated the experiment. This time I was looking for it and was certain, he had definitely just pushed harder. He was again annoyed and told me the real reason was that by waving his hand he had reversed my “Chi flow” and thereby weakened me. Thankfully I am very respectful and therefore did not laugh at him in front of everyone. I did say though, “I still think you pushed harder.”
The thing is I think he honestly believes that it was Chi power that made him able to push my arm down.