Bootcamp where China makes
FED up with Facebook, or coming to realise, in the words of David Cameron, ‘too many tweets might make a t**t’? It may be time to consider a short, sharp trip to the suburbs of Beijing. Here, in a collection of drab, concrete buildings surrounding a large courtyard is a military-style bootcamp designed with one thing in mind: to treat victims of a very modern disease — a compulsive addiction to electronic gadgets.
Formed in 2006, the Daxing Internet Addiction Treatment Centre (IATC) has so far welcomed 6,000 mostly young, mostly male patients — and claims to have ‘cured’ 75 per cent of them.
The man behind the facility is Tao Ran, a doctor and colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, regarded as China’s leading expert in wangyin, or internet addiction, which is said by the country’s government to affect 24 million of its 632 million internet users.
He describes wangyin as a form of mental illness, saying that 90 per cent of his patients are clinically depressed from a lack of normal social interaction. Many have back and eyesight problems due to spending up to 14 hours a day staring at screens, and a third suffer from eating disorders.
‘Internet addiction leads to problems in the brain similar to those derived from heroin consumption but, generally, it’s even more damaging,’ Mr Ran said recently. ‘It destroys relationships and deteriorates the body without the person knowing.’ To break it, Mr Ran confiscates all electronic devices from patients and forces them to follow a superstrict, military-style fitness regime, starting with parade drills at 6.30 each morning. They must also endure occasional spells in solitary confinement and take regular medication.
Progress is monitored by psychiatric assessments and regular brain scans. Mr Ran only considers someone cured if, six months after their release, they use the internet for fewer than six hours per day.
Some critics have called the techniques brutal. But they also yield results and there is high demand for places: the IATC, which charges £1,000 per month (more than twice the average Chinese urban worker’s wage) recently expanded, so it can treat 130 patients at any one time.
It isn’t alone: there are around 300 such clinics in China, due largely to an explosion in the popularity of online games such as World Of Warcraft. Many internet cafes have beds, so customers can sleep at their keyboards, and Shanghai recently passed a law forcing parents to stop minors ‘being overindulgent with online and electronic games’.
Meanwhile in Japan, where Facebook and Twitter are national obsessions, there are dozens of so-called internet ‘fasting camps’. Taiwan is also facing up to internet addiction — in January, its government voted to fine parents who allow children to spend ‘excessive time using electronic products’.