Quantcast
Channel: WCReplays.com Community Forums
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 666

Chinese "Boot Camps" Treat "Internet Addicts"

$
0
0
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ternet-addicts

Quote:

It was around midnight when the taxi pulled up outside the prison-like compound and Xiong Chengzuo’s parents delivered him to the man they call the “evil godfather”.

Earlier that day, the trio had set off from their home, more than 600km (370 miles) away, on what Xiong’s parents claimed was a family outing. In fact, their destination was a boot camp-style treatment centre for troubled teenagers and internet addicts whose online obsession has their parents worried.

“They tricked me,” Xiong says of his internment on 18 December last year. “I shouted and I yelled: ‘I want to get out! I don’t want to stay here!’” It was no use: “My parents ignored me – they left the next morning.”

Xiong, 16, is one of an estimated 23 million Chinese internet addicts. And the “evil godfather” – in fact an affable former People’s Liberation Army soldier called Xu Xiangyang – is one of those on the frontline of a global battle to rescue young people from what some perceive as a virtual hell.

“I’m totally against online games,” says Xu, the 57-year-old head of the Xu Xiangyang education and training centre in Huai’an, a city about 400km north of Shanghai. “They completely ruin a person’s health. They leave an individual with no means of earning money or supporting themselves. They are utterly meaningless and bring nothing positive to a family or a person.”

Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 666

Trending Articles