The busts highlighted China’s thriving black market in children — mostly involving buyers who want more children or those who want them as slave labor — that endures despite harsh penalties for traffickers, including death.

One case stretched across 14 provinces in China and the other involved a trafficking ring that mainly sold children in Vietnam through neighboring Guangxi province ….

It is often difficult to trace the parents of trafficked children and the law has not clearly defined the circumstances in which a buyer of a child should be punished. While many babies are stolen, some are sold by their parents.

Liu Ancheng, deputy director of the Ministry of Public Security Criminal Investigation Bureau, was quoted in the People’s Daily report as saying that if the buyers have not abused the children, they cannot be held criminally responsible.

ABC and China Daily recently reported that a teenaged couple in Guangdong sold three children to buy time at internet cafés:

They were finally turned into authorities when Li Lin’s mother found out what her son and his girlfriend had done.

When asked if they missed their children, the parents answered, “We don’t want to raise them, we just want to sell them for some money.”

Sanxiang City News reports the couple didn’t know they were breaking the law.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child trafficking, Guangxi, Guangzhou, Internet addiction, slave labor, Vietnam
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A group of young Chinese web addicts staged a mutiny at an Internet “boot camp”, tying up their instructor and fleeing the facility over its tough military-like techniques, state media said Tuesday.

The 14 mutineers, aged 15 to 22, were all caught by police when they failed to pay a taxi fare following their escape from the rehabilitation centre in east China’s Jiangsu province last week, the Global Times said.

They had tied up their supervisor in his bed to allow them to escape the “monotonous work and intensive training” at the camp, it said.

Parents of 13 of the Internet addicts have already sent them back to the Huai’an Internet Addiction Treatment Centre after picking them up at a local police station, the paper said.

“We need to teach them some discipline and help them to establish a regular lifestyle,” the paper quoted an employee at the camp as saying.

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Post tags: Internet addiction
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Many of the camps are imbued with a military atmosphere. Patients are forced to replace hours in front of the computer with arduous physical drills or even more extreme “treatments”.

“When intervening to prevent improper use of the internet, we should … strictly prohibit restriction of personal freedom and physical punishments,” the ministry said in a draft guideline for internet use by minors… The latest guidelines suggest officials in Beijing do not think that those with unhealthy internet habits should be forced offline permanently.

“The goal of intervention is … to urge the target people to use the Internet in a healthy way,” the guideline said. “It’s not to stop them from using the Internet.”

See also past posts on internet addiction.

© cschultz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet addiction
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The clips that make up this spoof are taken from the CCTV program “War With the Internet Demon” (战网魔), broadcast in 2008. The program was intended to illustrate the damaging effects of Internet addiction and praise Yang’s compassion, but the disturbing images of dazed young men wandering the halls of the Linyi Mental Hospital in Shandong Province make it hard to sympathize with Yang or the producers.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet addiction, spoof
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Liu first broke the story about the beating death of 15-year-old Deng Senshan at a rehab camp in the local Nanguo Morning Post (NMP) on Aug 4, attracting nationwide media coverage.

“I hope my former colleagues at NMP will continue their efforts to successfully run the newspaper, while trying to avoid risks,” he wrote.

Deng was allegedly beaten to death by counselors at the Qihang Salvation Training Camp in Nanning, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Aug 2.

“All Senshan’s family members are very sad about the authorities’ decision to fire the editor, while wondering if the reason behind it was that NMP reported the truth of my son’s death openly and justly,” said Deng Fei, the boy’s father.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet addiction, journalists, press freedom
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When the reporter arrived outside the rear wall of the school, children on the third and fourth floors started to stick notes into aluminum cans, drink bottles, and slippers, and others folded notes into paper planes. They tried to throw them over the wall, but owing to the distance, none of them succeeded.

Some children had papers bearing the messages “SOS” and “beating” which they waved out the windows. Some wrote calls for help on their clothing, which they displayed to the reporter. Some even yelled for help. They were all stopped by the instructors.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet addiction, teenagers
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China has banned electro-shock therapy as a treatment for Internet addiction, citing uncertainty in the safety and effectiveness of the practice after criticism in the local media.

The Ministry of Health announcement followed recent media reports about a controversial psychiatrist in Linyi, Shandong Province, who administered electric currents to nearly 3,000 teenagers in an attempt to rid them of their Internet habit.

The Chinese government has led a campaign for over a year against Internet addiction, saying young people’s excessive time in Internet cafes, known as Web bars in Chinese, is hurting their studies and damaging family life.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet addiction
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Chinese teenagers hooked on the internet are being subjected to electro-shock therapy at a clinic that claims they will be “reborn” free of the obsession.

However, its harsh methods have caused an outcry after some of the 3,000 youths treated so far began posting their experiences – on the web.

Overuse of the internet has become a household worry in China. The country has more than 300m internet users, 40m of whom play online games.

An official study two years ago claimed that almost 10% of the nation’s young people were “addicted to the web”.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet addiction, teenagers
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Commentary from Hu Yong:

. . . So-called Internet addition refers to the repeated and excessive use of the Internet to the point that is becomes a kind of mental disorder. It can manifest itself as the intense desire to use the Internet repeatedly, and withdrawal symptoms are often observed when Internet use is decreased. At the same time, the disorder can result in somatic symptoms. Some experts have given us chilling numbers, saying that approximately 20 million people in China have Internet addiction or are predisposed. This shocking number prompted Yang Yongxin to write on his blog that if we cannot effectively control the spread of Internet addiction, it would mean the “death of the party and the nation” (亡党亡国) and would mean entire Chinese people “would be without children and grandchildren,” that it would make America’s 1970s policy of “victory without war” become a reality, allowing Chinese culture to perish under the onslaught of online imperialism!

Well, with things coming to such a point as that, how can our party and nation afford not to give this top priority? What is regrettable, though, is that these experts [like Yang Yongxin] have not to this day been able to define clearly what Internet addiction is . . .

Oiwan Lam of Global Voices Advocacy has summarized a report by　Guo Jianlong of the 21st Century Business Herald on the Internet addiction clinic supervised by Yang. The original article could not be published in its entirety, and was posted in full on his blog instead.

Every morning there is a morning assembly for creating public pressure or more concretely humiliation in the public against stubborn patients. The gathering, attended by more than 300 people, reminds people of the public prosecution and psychological torture during the cultural revolution. For example, patients are asked to admit their wrongs and attack others’ wrongs in the public; kids are demanded to bow to their parents to show their willingness to be submissive. Sadly, the parents are convinced of the effectiveness in the treatment by such act.

Everyday, patients have to go through morning public assembly and performance review, afternoon military training and evening another performance review session. Taking tranquillizers is also part of the treatment.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet addiction, Shandong, Yang Yongxin
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China developed the anti-online game addiction system in July 2007 to reduce on-line addiction among young people. All game operators in China are required to deter minors from playing their games for more than three hours a day. Online gamers are also required to register using their real names and identity card numbers to determine whether or not they are under the age of 18.

The system will restricts a minor’s playing time by canceling half their earned credits if they remain online for more than three hours a day. If the child plays for more than five hours a day, all of their gaming credits will be lost.

The survey also showed that about 60 percent of youngsters are satisfied with the anti-addiction system.

More on Internet addiction in China:

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet addiction, online gaming
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