Inside China’s battle to keep internet addiction in check
- Many internet addiction treatment centres in China provide ‘detox’ services mostly for young people
- China’s video-gaming industry is estimated to be worth US$30 billion in revenue each year
Li Jiazhuo, 14, was bundled away one afternoon in May by two burly men who identified themselves as Education Bureau officers there to investigate his truancy from school.
Except they were not from the Education Bureau but were orderlies from an internet detox centre run by an ex-Army colonel.
They had gone to drag the teenager away from his computer at the behest of his mother, who had watched her son skip meals and forgo sleep to play online games for 20 hours a day for weeks.
His favourite titles were League of Legends and Honor of Kings, both owned by Tencent Holdings, the Chinese internet giant that is also behind the WeChat social messaging app.
Internet addiction has received fresh scrutiny after the World Health Organisation added gaming disorder to its international classification of diseases last year, 10 years after China first classified it as a public health threat.
“He had cut himself off from the real world,” said Li’s mother, Qiu Cuo, who cried while recounting the events of that afternoon. “We dared not block his access to the internet for fear he would harm himself. It was the end of my world.”
Li is one of about 100 mostly teenage boys and girls at the Adolescent Psychological Development Base, a drab collection of buildings located about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from central Beijing.