Alcoholism is on the rise in China, driven by growing levels of disposable income, poor social awareness and a continued lack of liquor licensing laws. While accurate figures are hard to come by, experts estimate there are about 28 million alcoholics in the country.

Determined to help others beat their addiction, Yang has set up the first privately run hotline in the country to counsel alcoholics. The phone rings all day, he says, with callers from China and overseas. 'There is definitely an alcohol problem in China. In this respect, there is no difference at all between Chinese people and foreigners. When it comes to alcohol, everyone is the same.'

Something of the strength of will that must have been required to give up drinking is visible in Yang's manner. A slim man of medium height with an unsmiling, serious expression, Yang listens intently and chooses his words carefully. There is an aura of stillness about him and his sentences are short, almost pithy, his eyes watchful underneath a military-style, brush haircut.

Dressed nattily in a tan suit with a brown shirt and tie, Yang insists on opening the windows wide during our interview in a Beijing hotel, flooding the room with icy, sub-zero gusts, as if testing both his and his interviewer's endurance. As he talks, he gazes from time to time at his hands, the knuckles scarred from years of kung-fu fighting. Yang was among the best in the force. The first two fingers of his right hand are stained a deep, tobacco yellow, the legacy of a 60-a-day smoking habit.

Since giving up drinking on July 25, 2001 - his 39th birthday - Yang's life goal has been to reform as many drinkers as possible. In addition to the hotline, he has turned his apartment into an open house for drinkers, where he plies them with beer so they start to talk about themselves. His goal is to touch their emotions and get them to give up drinking. 'I call it the Yang Xiaonan 'feeling' cure,' he says proudly. If he can get government permission, he says, he plans to buy a minivan and drive around China, counselling along the way.

About two years ago Yang also converted to Christianity, although he's hazy on the details. 'I don't know why I chose Christianity and not, say, Buddhism,' he says. 'Someone gave me a book about it and it just seemed right.'

Gao Haisheng, chief psychiatrist at Hospital No.6 in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, has been treating alcoholics for years. He came to know Yang's story after Yang published his autobiography this month. Gao fully supports his curative methods.

'I think what he's doing is very good. He is trying to get at how people feel,' says Gao. 'We call it emotional comprehension. You see, alcoholics very often know that what they're doing is wrong but knowing doesn't help, it's not effective. What they need is for their emotions to be truly engaged. They need to learn to hate alcohol, just as they once loved it.'

About 80 per cent of alcohol consumption in China is in the form of spirits, or bai jiu, a potent clear, grain liquor. The remaining 20 per cent is made up of beer and wine, either traditional rice wine or, less common, European-style wine. According to Gao, changing social patterns - as well as more spending power -are contributing to higher consumption. Traditionally, alcohol was drunk by a wide sector of the population only at festivals, such as Lunar New Year. But growing numbers of white-collar workers drink alcohol every day. Women are also drinking more as traditional taboos weaken.

While the facilities to treat alcohol addiction are available in cities, in the countryside the problem is largely ignored.

'In big cities like Beijing or Shanghai the services being offered are OK. But in the countryside or in remote areas, it's a very different situation,' says Gao.

Yang's story is typical. Growing up in Xinyang city, not far from Zhengzhou, he began drinking at 14. He 'represented' his father, a member of the People's Liberation Army, in drinking matches with his father's friends and colleagues. In China, friends or relatives will sometimes drink on behalf of another person, often a superior at work, in order to help them avoid losing face if they can't keep up with the competitive drinking that can characterise a banquet or party. 'I used to drink for my father, who didn't drink,' he says.

Aged 19, Yang joined the army and was transferred to a good job in Beijing in a communications unit. Alcohol was common in the ranks. 'I was drinking every morning when I got out of bed,' he says. Demobbed in 1983, Yang returned to Xinyang, where he joined the police, soon moving to the provincial capital, Zhengzhou. Seven years later, aged 28, he married Zhao but it was not a happy union. Yang and Zhao are not divorced, but they no longer live together. Yang's son lives with Zhao. 'They can't stand all the drinkers who come by,' says Yang with a shrug, as if to say, 'who could?'.

But Zhao did leave him one precious gift. On his 39th birthday, his health failing from the years of alcohol abuse, she presented him with a bottle of spirits and a folded sheet of newspaper.

It was a letter clipped from a local paper in which a wife (Zhao insists it wasn't her) appealed to her husband to give up drinking. 'That letter really got to me,' says Yang. 'It moved me. I decided that day I was going to stop. The best medicine is your tears,' he says, tracing a line from his left eye down his face.

Yang says he also gets calls from overseas, including from North America and Europe. Often, someone will ring on behalf of a family member - usually a spouse - and ask for advice. They talk via an interpreter. 'I get a lot of calls - oh, too many! From England. Also from America and Ireland. They drink a lot there, mostly beer but also some wine. Wine is harder to cure,' he says.

The work is difficult - slow and often unrewarding. 'What you have to understand is that alcoholics are ill. And they are very tricky people. They blame others for everything. They blame society, or their families. But 99 per cent of people who drink want to give up.'

Zhao and Yang still appear together in public, such as on a recent talk show on Chinese TV, when members of a fascinated audience took the microphone to explain their own families' battle with alcohol, eliciting comments from others along the lines of: Aren't you ashamed to talk about this in public? But Yang's openness about his problem has clearly hit a nerve. Yang's fervour to help has taken over his life, perhaps a little like drinking used to.

'You see, I didn't just want to stop for myself. I want to help other people,' he says. Then, looking at his nicotine-stained fingers, he takes aim at his next target: smoking, which he hopes soon to add to the list of things he used to do.

'I've cut down to 15 a day, but smoking is next. You have to give up smoking, too.'