BeulalandBlog : China's military-like internet addiction camps

GIULIA MARCHI PHOTO

Patients receive instructions while standing in the courtyard of the internet addiction treatment centre

Where teens are beaten, tied up and plied with drugs to ‘cure’ their obsession with computer games

IT WAS mid-afternoon when the drill sergeant’s patience with the teenage boys finally snapped, and he landed the punch.

He clenched his fist and made a hard, thudding strike to the chest of a gangly lad who had been giggling at Beijing's China Young Mental Development Base, one of China’s notorious ‘internet addiction rehab centres’.

After time in the yard, Jamie and the other patients head into the centre to continue their addiction treatment

Around 80 patients, the majority of which were male with an average age of about 16 to 17, were consigned to the prison-like centre by their parents in an attempt to cure them of their digital obsessions.

These centres have caused uproar for alleged violence and for locking up patients, who are often removed from school against their will and sometimes drugged to get them in the facilities.

My visit was in 2015, and what I saw painted a similarly bleak picture of life in these controversial places.

Before I saw the punch, which was punishment for larking about during one of the military-style exercises patients are forced to do, I heard how the same drill sergeant tied up misbehaving patients.

And shortly before that Tao Ran, the centre’s boss and a concrete-tough former People’s Liberation Army colonel, told me that the venue had been operating since 2003.

Five years after it opened, in 2008, China became the first country to recognise internet addiction disorder (IAD) as a mental illness.

The youngsters receiving treatment are encouraged to keep active with activities such as table tennis

The Chinese government estimates that around 24 million people in the country suffer from IAD, many of them teenagers addicted to playing online games such as League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients.

And an estimated 300 Chinese internet addiction centres have sprung up to treat them.
Earlier this month, two years after my visit to the Beijing centre, one of them made headlines that shocked the country.

Eighteen-year-old Li Ao died after spending less than two days in the Hefei Zhengneng Education facility, an internet addiction centre in China’s eastern Anhui province.

His body showed evidence of multiple injuries, both internal and external.

His mother, who has the surname Liu, told the Anhui Shangbao newspaper: "My son's body was completely covered with scars, from top to toe. When I sent my son to the centre he was still fine, how could he have died within 48 hours?"