Foreign Editor Margaret Ward visits a boot camp in Beijing that's trying to cure internet addiction among young Chinese
Watch the report
A black Audi with tinted windows pulls up alongside us in a nondescript car park in the southern suburbs of Beijing. We swap cars, transfer our camera gear to the boot of the Audi and put on the hats we had brought along as instructed.
The Audi drives a couple of hundred metres to the gates of a Chinese army base. The sentries take a quick look - and the car was waved through. Another surreal morning in China.
As we drive alongside a parade ground where hundreds of soldiers from the People's Liberation Army are drilling. We turn a corner into an area of three story high buildings hung with laundry. This is the China Youth Addiction Branch of Beijing military hospital and we're here to meet the teenage addicts sent by their parents to a tough boot camp to try and wean them off their habit.
The doctor in charge is Colonel Tao Ran. He's fond of publicity but strictly speaking foreign media aren't welcome on a base belonging to the People's Liberation Army. Hence the subterfuge, and the hats.
As we go upstairs the steel door of the dormitory landing is unlocked and twenty odd youths in badly fitting drab green fatigues clatter down the stairs. They tumble out into the yard and begin morning drill under the eyes of a far more nattily dressed officer.
In China, the military is involved in many aspects of life and runs many hospitals, some of them as money-making ventures. Parents pay around 3,000 dollars to send their child here for three months. In China that is serious money. According to Colonel Tao Ran running the centre on military lines makes sense.
'Internet addicts don't have good habits,' he says. 'They're on the internet day and night so they don't have normal living and studying habits. Military training can help them build up healthy habits and team relationships with others.'
China has 300 million internet users - give or take a few million - more than any other country in the world. It has all happened very quickly. Tao Ran defines internet addiction as spending more than six hours consecutively online per day for three months, and he says it's a symptom of other problems in the young person's life.
Wei Zhen is a 23 year old college student who used to spend up to 12 hours a day online. He says he didn't have a good relationship with his parents. 'They had too much control over me,' he says. 'I did not feel free. But online, I felt free do anything I like.'
According to the colonel, pressure from parents is the main reason young people are escaping onto the internet. In one - child families in China parents put all their hopes for the future onto their child but with such a huge population competition is intense. 'There's too much pressure from parents, requiring them to be successful, there a lot criticism and blame', Tao Ran says.
'Parents also put too many limits on their life, how they should dress and what kind of people they should be. All that stifles the kid's nature and self esteem.'
Parents also attend the camp for several weeks, and attend lectures and workshops. The boot camp programme involves individual and group therapy, sport, arts and crafts, drills and lectures. The students live in eight person dormitories which are basic but clean. They get up early and go to bed early. There are no mobile phones, no MP3 players and of course no internet.
The atmosphere appears to be a very Chinese mixture of discipline and informality. Most students hate the place when they first arrive, but seem to get used to it. One has been here three times, 'I feel this is a very good place, says 14-year-old Guo Qi. 'Because it is isolated from society, I don't need to face the reality and sufferings of the world.'
But doesn't he risk replacing one addiction with another? 'I understand that I can not stay here forever, and the cost is also high.' he says. 'I realise that I have to face my life, that it's not good to hide in here.'
In some ways the boot-camp seems to replace one virtual world with another. Going cold turkey for three months may be a start but the students won't be able to avoid the internet when they leave. They have to find a way of integrating it into their lives without it taking over.
'We try to teach them to be the owners of the internet,' says Tao Ran, 'not its slaves.'
