Electroshock therapy for China's "internet addicts"Follow

Hey guys,

I am an international students from China and I am a huge fan of Wow (there are 3.2 million Wow players in China).
Wow is a popular game, however, after state-run newspapers started sharing stories about the dangers of Internet addiction, thousands of worried Chinese parents have sent their “Internet-addicted” children (remember, because of China’s one child policy that means parents’ ONLY child) to the net-addiction rehab camps (some of the camps actually use Electroshock Therapy for internet addicts)

Here is the story I quoted from thefastertimes.com
“Daily life for the children in these camps involves endless military-like training including long distance running and other drills. They also have to attend real life classes (something children accustomed to living their lives in virtual “World of Warcraft” worlds aren’t quite familiar with) in an effort to help them rediscover what it means to be part of an actual team.
To Electroshock or Not? The Chinese Debate How to Cure Internet Addiction
The most horrifying aspect of these camps is that children are subjected to electroshock therapy. A therapist asks a question such as: do you still want to go online? Before the child can give a yes or no answer, the therapist presses a button and an electric current is sent through the child’s body, creating a moment of spasms. Therapists defend this treatment, saying that the electric current is not life-threatening, and that its purpose is to make patients feel numb or torpid toward Internet stimuli. In the end, they hope, inmates will feel nausea whenever the word “Internet” is mentioned.”


I just want to know what of you think of it.
P.S the electroshock therapy has been banned after years of debate in China

You might have chosen a better topic to start with. You've picked an old story to frame a human rights debate in loosely WoW related terms.

Some of the points are less than accurately represented. The One Child Policy is a popular target. It sounds draconian and it has certainly been applied in extreme ways. Still, I find that there are quite a few younger Chinese who have one or more siblings. Very often one finds a younger brother may have one or two older sisters. So, no, you've somewhat overstated things by saying "China's one child policy ... means parents' ONLY child".



Right, and so does the life of an average high school student or college freshman. That's an ordinary part of the school regimen in China, but it has been presented in terms that make it sound like some kind of special discipline. From the school side, one of the reasons for military training is that it is a reaction to bubbling by students ... the tendency (which is even stronger in China) for students to group according to things like home town or province. The uniforms, like school uniforms all over the world, are used both to create a sense of unity and to downplay differences such as wealth. An outside observer might not know those things or might be skeptical about the need for them.

The classes about real life are mildly humorous given the way students often live before passing the national college entrance exam, a number of college freshmen could also use an introduction to real life course.

I remember teaching during those days, and I was also playing World of Warcraft. One of my gan nv'er got me started on it specifically because I needed a topic that young men in my classes could relate to. Sadly, I also remember watching a number of good students completely crash and burn in their studies because they were raiders. Was electroshock therapy required? No, what the article describes is a misuse of the term, they've described a form of aversive training and it has been discontinued. It always was controversial. Would some of those students have benefited from an intervention that forced them to break their pattern? Quite possibly. This brings the discussion into a problematic area, China is a high context environment that cannot easily be translated for a foreign audience. Try it. Try getting a North American or European from a low context environment to understand mianzi and guanxi as they would be understood by a Chinese audience.

In the interest of clarity, remember guys, Rhode is not Chinese.