internet addiction clinic
When China has a problem the first port of call is the Military
This is Beijing Military Hospital's 6 am wake up call and Qing is the
first to respond. These patients are not victims of war, but of a new
disease emerging in a time of prosperity.
The young men who are treated here are addicts; most are addicted to
playing Internet games, and some to on-line chat rooms ...
pre-occupations that have cost them their studies, their health, even
their sanity.
Wang is being pumped with what the nurse calls a "calming fluid". Not
these boys nor their parents can know what it contains. Like all the
concoctions used in this clinic, it's contents are a military secret.
But some parents have become so worried they are willing to trust this
authority to save their child.
30% of addicts in this ward are here because they became violent, too
caught up were they in their virtual worlds. Qing is one of them. He
has been playing games on-line for the last 4 years. He was brought
here by his parents when he tried to stab one of his classmates.
I had no way to solve my problems, and no place to release myself so I
went on-line. I often quarrelled with my parents and sometimes we hit
each other.
The clinic claims to cure 80% of its patients. But one day's treatment
here costs a quarter of your average Beijing monthly salary. This is
treatment for the most privileged.
Tao Ran is the clinic's mastermind. He aims to bring these young
people back to reality.
"Addicts often get angry, they become cold to emotions, only having
feelings for their on-line friends. They have no mood to do anything.
Here we use a combination of medical and psychological methods to
relieve out patients."
Tao Ran claims that Internet addiction is a serious disease and can be fatal.
"A 13 year old child jumped off a building and killed himself. From
reading his diary we can see that his mind merged between the real
world and the on-line world. He wrote that in the real world he is
rubbish. He thought that people can live and die and live again like
in a game".
Psychologists here say that one of the main factors behind Internet
addiction is the pressure Chinese parent's put on their children to
succeed.
One of these was Dai Ou. She used to obsess about her son's grades. If
he wasn't top of the class, it wasn't good enough. But when her son
dropped out of school, preferring a life on-line, she realised she had
pushed him too far:
"Parent's design a life for their child before he is even born, we
want our children to be the best, go to university and get a brilliant
job. Economic development means that only a minority can live really
well. We don't want our children to be the ones who don't survive. But
now we realise that if we let them be who they want to be, they would
not suffer so much."
These are China's new model workers, the yuppies that many a parent
wishes their child will become.
But in bedrooms across China's cities more and more young people are
letting their on-line identities dominate their lives, seeking escape
from the pressures that the new economic boom has brought to China.
It is at night when many sneak from their homes, or school
dormitories, to find their fix.
This is the reality of China's virtual world.
Officially Internet café's have midnight curfews, but this is 1am in
Beijing, and, like most of the other hundred thousand Internet cafes
in China, there is not an empty seat in the house.
Chinese people have always loved playing games. But this communal
street life is rapidly being lost in China's modern cities. Instead
communities are found on-line. On-line gamers form associations,
networks. Recently, on-line friends organised a cyber-funeral when one
of theirs died suddenly after spending consecutive days on-line in her
attempt to kill the Black Dragon Prince in this game. This obsession
is growing. A few months ago a man was sentenced to life imprisonment
for stabbing a 23 year old fellow gamer to death in a dispute over a
'dragon sword' in this on-line game. And Shan Xiuyun, a well known
judge in Beijing recently claimed 90% of juvenile crime in Beijing is
related to the Internet.
Though Beijing's military hospital may be helping these few, the
problem is widespread and deeper set. Qing does not think that 15 days
in this clinic will help him.
"The Internet is just a tool not a cause of the problem. Change needs
to happen across society. For us teenagers the pressures from school
and from home are just too much. There is no place to escape. At home
we don't have any brothers and sisters, as soon as our parents open
their mouth they say 'achieve, achieve'. Classmates strive against one
another. The Internet is virtual - it is the only place to escape".
China's commercial revolution has disrupted society. More freedoms
have been found, but at what price?
China's new Gang of 4 - google, cisco, microsoft and yahoo!
Four of America's giants in internet technology called together for a telling off.
upsot
The committee Chairman
introduces them to Mr Li a falungong practitioner who developed technology to bypass the web blocks in China
[Notes:chairman and mr li sot]
over the last few months
[Notes:graphic 4 companies]
[Notes:MICROSOFT LOGO "Deleted anti-Beijing blog"]
Microsoft have been accused of deleting a blog at the request of the government
[Notes:YAHOO LOGO "Handed e-mail to authorities"]
Yahoo are said to have handed over
an imprisoned journalist's email to Chinese authorities.
[Notes:CISCO LOGO Internet censorship and surveillance]
Cisco sells technology to China which its argued is used for internet censorship and surveillance
[Notes:GOOGLE LOGO Blocks sensitive websites]
Google.cn blocks websites considered 'sensitive'
[Notes:sot - interaction - the best one]
[Notes:google pics China lib - maybe website too]
One Chinese blogger has called the new google.cn a eunuch version. But many argue that these international media companies have brought more free information to the internet in China then ever before and they need to be there even if castrated...
And while many Chinese users rely on international internet technologies some understand the compromises
[Notes:webcam sot]
"i use google all the time to find my information. the Chinese government's position is understandable, they only want to block websites which aim to overthrow the government..."
jing jing and cha cha, cartoon versions of the internet police which scour the web everyday
[Notes:chinese web cafe]
But determined users know how to weave through the system
[Notes:china phono]
Chinese Cisco trained engineer
"it is impossible to block the internet completely, if we really want to we can get to the information we are looking for."
[Notes:back to senate shots]
[Notes:baidu pictures]
back in Washington, an unusual scene. big business, meek faced, explaining itself to government.
upsot
But outside of the committee room corporate America has been arguing it is government that needs to take a stand.
With China, America's crusade for democracy - apparantly at odds - with their place as world economic power.
Shanwei shoot up
Blackouts happen frequently in China's boom towns... lacking the energy to sustain their rapid growth.
(screen is black) (fast shots of crane and power chimney and boom town feel)
This power plant was meant to be part of the solution...
(power plant pic)
Canton province claims it would be the biggest in Asia.
(Chinese website with cheque)
Total investment clocks at 20 million pounds. Including an indirect loan from the World Bank.
( to World Bank website)
The power plant press hype, doesn't mention the 20,000 villagers whose land has been built on and whose bay polluted by this power station.
(english Power plant website) - pics
Those villagers were promised a tiny amount of compensation by local officials but money never came. They were obstructed by the authorities from taking legal action. So they began to use their bodies to block the gates to the plant and stopped the factory's production for the last few weeks.
(protest stills)
As China refashions its landscape, land disputes have become increasingly common. 74,000 rural protests were counted in 2004. (coutnry giving way to city from bus to airport)
Last week Tuesday 6th December at the call of a gong ten thousand villagers staged a protest. As night descended the paramilitary opened fire. Each side claims it was the other that began the violence. The events of the night are unclear but somewhere between three and twenty villagers were shot dead leaving 8 injured by the bullets of army machine guns. (Photos and camera).
---
The government made a statement saying that the incident was mishandled by the paramilitary and the commander who ordered the shooting had been detained. (police in airport)
But an atmosphere of terror still hung over the villagers I speak to on the phone from Beijing. I set off for Shanwei to find out why. (airport)
Apart from a couple of reports there has been a tight lid on the media over the incident. Most of the people on this plane have no idea that it took place. (newspapers – people sleeping)
On the bus from the airport I call some of the villagers. Police are hawking the area and they are not sure how I will be able to get in. (bus wide – me on the phone – PTCs)
The next day when we tried to get into the village we were stopped at a roadblock. The police didn't understand the English written on my passport or find my visa which says I am a journalist.
HONG KONG
Had I been found out, the likelihood is that I would still be being interrogated. GRAPHIC
But after an hour they let us turn back.
(roadblock, in taxi,
A villager then agreed to meet us in a town 50 km away. On his way out of the village he was searched.
He was worried I was not a journalist, but an official trying to trick him.
He asked me to get on the back of a motorcycle taxi and give the phone to the driver.
I find him at last in a small yard
"We are in a crisis. We cannot find safety. Everyone stays at home, afraid to come out. We don't have any protection. If anyone found out I am revealing this little to you, the police would arrest me and if they don't beat me to death they will lock me up"
"Around 69 people have been arrested so far. In the evenings police come to the village, they identify the people who are good at talking and take them away.
The law doesn't work here any more. We need the central government to come - if they don't come there is no solution. We need them to come to save us."
Lawyer Zhang Chengmao told me that the villager's appeal to the central government comes from an ancient Chinese political idea where people believe that a benevolent leader at the top, will shade them from petty corruption at local levels.
"This situation has emerged from a conflict of economic interests and corruption. It is terrible that blood has been shed. if we don't learn from this, i am afraid we might see more incidents like this. We need to learn the system needs to change - at the moment there is inequality between villagers and officials. We need a system where there is more democracy."
But it seems little is being learnt. In this village just a few miles from Dongzhou these people have no idea about what happened.
The World Bank credits China with bringing 400 million people out of poverty. but often there seems to be a disconnect between the new wealth generated by China's development and real respect for the lives of people in China's countryside. (plastic sheeting)
Dawn on Tiananmen Square. The flag raising ceremony. A daily rite of passage. Many of the pilgrims come from small towns and villages around China... proud of their country's economic transformation.
“The Heavens are High and the Emperor is Far away”, an old Chinese saying refers to the freedom from close central rule enjoyed by people far from the capital. Now it is an excuse to get Beijing off the hook for atrocities committed within its country.
To date, no one from the central government has been down to speak to the villagers of Dongzhou. Perhaps they are embarrassed - this sort of thing shouldn't happen in modern day China.
Or perhaps China is just too big for the central government to control?
Whatever the case, the residents of Dongzhou still grieve their dead, and still wait for justice to come.
