Free Friends Forum 25: Paternalist Power Corrupts, Parent Power Corrupts Absolutely—Intergenerational Childhood Trauma
Chinese Internet Addiction Brainwashing Camps as Symptom of Collective Trauma Re-Victimisation
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Obsessive Compulsive Control Disorder (OCCD) inflicted on its populace has created a new “Mental Illness” labeled “Internet Addiction” and hundreds of para-military and psychiatric-like treatment camps are profiting by promising parents they will “cure” the “addicted” adolescents from their Internet “Mental Illness”. As a learner-teacher of Parent Effectiveness Training (PET) who lived and taught in China 2003 to 2015 I have experience with the Chinese “Tiger Mother/Father” authoritarian ownership parenting typical there. My Substack posts on this theme
https://responsiblyfree.substack.com/p/trusting-our-children-trusting-ourselves
https://responsiblyfree.substack.com/p/do-we-want-obedient-parents-raising
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DIAGNOSIA—A VR EXPERIENCE BY MENGTAI ZHANG AND LEMON GUO. 1:19 “Diagnosia” portrays Mengtai’s memories of being incarcerated in a military-operated Internet addiction camp in Beijing in 2007, where internet addiction and other youth issues were treated as a severe mental disorder with sometimes violent means. By tracing the lineage of “Internet addiction” in China’s cultural context, the work discusses how societies can create or manifest pathologies as a tool for social control.
https://mengtaizhang.com/diagnosia
CAN PARENT CHANGE THEIR ATTITUDES? Gordon Thomas, founder of Parent Effectiveness Training (PET)
“Parents find it difficult to throw off the oppressive value system, acquired from their own parents and now causing them to be excessively judgmental and unaccepting of their children. Still others have trouble modifying their attitude of “owning” their children or their deep commitment to a goal of making their children fit a preconceived mold; this attitude is found mostly in parents who have been strongly influenced by the dogmas of a few religious sects that teach parents to have a moral obligation to make converts out of their children, even though it may mean using the power and authority of the parent or using methods of influence not too dissimilar from brainwashing and thought control.”
TEACHING EFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVES TO AUTHORITY AND POWER
“As a society we must urgently adopt the goal of finding and teaching effective alternatives to authority and power in dealing with other persons—children or adults—alternatives that will produce human beings with sufficient courage, autonomy, and self-discipline to resist being controlled by authority when obedience to that authority would contradict their own sense of what is right and what is wrong. Parents can raise children who are responsible, self-disciplined, and cooperative without relying on the weapon of fear; they can learn how to influence children to behave out of genuine consideration for the needs of parents rather than out of fear of punishment or withdrawal of privileges.” Thomas Gordon, founder of Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.)
DR. THOMAS GORDON ON PARENT EFFECTIVENESS TRAINING - A SHIFT AWAY FROM POWER AND CONTROL ParentEffectivenessTraining, June 14, 2017. 1:09
PARENT EFFECTIVENESS TRAINING (PET) ONLINE STARTS 7PM SUNDAY--UPDATE: NOVEMBER 24, 2024 (New Zealand time)--PEACEFUL PARENTING FOR A PEACEFUL WORLD
https://responsiblyfree.substack.com/p/parent-effectiveness-training-pet
HOW THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION PLAYED SOCIETY AGAINST ITSELF. Tania Branigan on the Enduring Impact of Collective Intergenerational Trauma in China Literary Hub, Oct 27, 2023.
The trauma would not die with its victims: it had already replicated itself in their children, and their children’s children. The Cultural Revolution showed that one thing was more terrifying than a stranger: someone close to you. To know a person was no longer the kernel of trust but of suspicion. Those around you, those who knew you best, had the greatest power to harm.
https://lithub.com/how-the-cultural-revolution-played-society-against-itself/
THE IMPACT OF CHINA'S ‘GREAT LEAP FORWARD’ - TANIA BRANIGAN Intelligence Squared, May 11, 2023. 13:02
10:15 TANIA “In the case of the young man who denounced his mother, I mean he was 17, he sent her to her death, he and his father, by revealing that she'd denounced Chairman Mao… The revolution began to eat its own children--perpetrators became victims became perpetrators rather like in this family and nobody knew how to navigate during that decade and so you just see a nation that's hugely traumatized still and that struggles to come to terms with what people have done and what was done to them….”
INSIDE CHINA’S BRUTAL INTERNET ADDICTION CLINICS. Sixth Tone, Wu Peiyue, Oct 21, 2022
Since 2002, thousands of Chinese teenagers have been labeled “internet addicts” and thrown into psychiatric facilities, where they’re subjected to forced medication, military training, and in some cases even electroshock therapy. A new film offers a terrifying glimpse inside the system.
The filmmakers have made it their mission to expose the brutality of these facilities, where thousands of young Chinese have been incarcerated — often on dubious grounds — and subjected to forced medication, military training, and in some cases even electroshock therapy in the name of curing their “internet addiction.”
Zhang himself was thrown into one of these clinics at the age of 17, and the film is heavily based on his experience. Though he was only there for a month, the inhumane treatment he received still haunts him over a decade later.
The facility Zhang was sent to — the Youth Psychological Growth Base, in suburban Beijing — didn’t employ electroshock therapy. But Zhang and the other patients were forced to take psychiatric medication twice a day. The nurses would shine flashlights into their mouths to check they hadn’t hidden the pills under their tongues, Zhang recalls.
“I still don’t know what the medicine was, but the rumors in the clinic were that it affected sexual functions,” he says. “I felt like I was being raped.”
In reality, China’s internet addiction clinics never disappeared. On business information platform Tianyancha, more than 50 companies are listed as providing treatment for internet addiction. Meanwhile, after several years of hiatus, Chinese media have begun labeling video games a form of “spiritual opium” and “electronic heroin” once more.
Most troublingly, research conducted inside these Chinese clinics has gained international recognition. The director of the facility where Zhang was interned, Tao Ran, published a paper based on the clinic’s treatment of its own patients, in which he proposed a set of diagnostic criteria for gaming disorder. This work generated significant interest among academics, and even influenced thinking on gaming disorder in the United States.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1011428
THE HISTORY OF CHINA'S ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY FOR INTERNET ADDICTION. Inside China’s Internet Addiction Centers Stars Insider, November 18, 2024
Excessive online usage is a growing concern in today’s digital age. Rather than traditional therapies, China took an extreme approach to combat this perceived threat. In the early 2000s, the unique industry of Internet addiction treatment centers emerged. These centers employed controversial and often abusive methods, including military-style discipline and electroconvulsive therapy, to “cure” young people of their compulsive online behavior. https://www.starsinsider.com/lifestyle/789268/the-history-of-chinas-electroshock-therapy-for-internet-addiction
MEET THE ARTISTS: MENGTAI ZHANG AND LEMON GUO ON "DIAGNOSIA" Sundance Institute, Dec 17, 2021. 1:45
“DIAGNOSIA”: ENVIRONMENTAL STORYTELLING OF A CHINESE INTERNET ADDICTION CAMP. Voices of VR, Jan 27, 2022. Audio. 49:26
Diagnosia is an immersive, non-linear environmental storytelling piece that takes you inside of a Chinese Internet Addiction Camp. In the early 2000s in China, there was a moral panic around video game use as state-run Chinese media started to declare label excessive technology use as “electronic heroin” and “spiritual opium.” Director Mengtai Zhang was bullied in school and was experiencing a stressful familial situation, which resulted in him retreating into video games, and was labeled a teenage “Internet addict” and sent off to an Internet addiction camp run by Chinese military in Beijing in 2007
YANG MOST CONTROVERSIAL DOCTOR IN CHINA SHOCK TREATMENTS FOR CHINESE INTERNET ADDICTION 0:50
YANG YONGXIN Wikipedia
Yang Yongxin (Chinese: 杨永信; born 21 June 1962) is a Chinese psychiatrist who advocated and practiced a highly controversial[3] form of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) without anesthesia or muscle relaxants as a cure for video game and Internet addiction in adolescents.[4][5] Yang is currently deputy chief of the Fourth Hospital of Linyi (Linyi Mental Hospital), in the Shandong province of China. He runs the Internet Addiction Treatment Center at the hospital. According to media reports, families of teenaged patients sent to the hospital paid CNY 5,500 (US$805) per month to be treated using a combination of psychiatric medication and ECT, which Yang dubbed as "xingnao" (Chinese: 醒脑, brain-waking) treatment.[6] He treated 3,000 adolescents before the practice was prohibited by the Chinese Ministry of Health.[6] Yang claimed that 96% of his patients had shown signs of improvement, a figure that was questioned by the Chinese media. Since the ban, Yang has used 'low-frequency pulse therapy', a treatment of his own devising alleged by former patients to be more painful than ECT.[7] In 2016, the center claimed to have treated more than 6,000 adolescents.[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Yongxin
INSIDE CHINA‘S TORTURE CAMPS FOR TEENS. Fern, July 4, 2024. 26:45
In China there is a special place for kids with behavioral problems. Each with their own, ever more cruel practices to force teenagers into obedience…
INTERNET ADDICTION. CHINESE SCHOOLS. TRUE CRIME STORIES. The Dark Trail, May 22, 2024. 28:54
Internet addiction. Chinese schools. True crime stories.
PARENTS PAID FOR THEIR TEENS TO BE KIDNAPPED FROM BED & TAKEN TO ELITE TORTURE ACADEMY. Rotten Mango, Oct 19, 2023. 1:08:52
CHINA'S EXTREME ADDICTION TO THE INTERNET | OBSESSIONS | S1E01 | BEYOND DOCUMENTARY. May 31, 2022. 23:07
From the bold to the bizarre, from the freaky to the fun – every society has an obsession. Some are modern while others have existed for centuries. Join happy-go-lucky host Jason Godfrey in this documentary series as he uncovers the obsessive behaviours that make the Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Koreans and Filipinos who they are and learns how one society’s obsession can become the new normal.
BOOT CAMPS FOR INTERNET ADDICTS?! | FREE DOC BITES | FREE DOCUMENTARY. Free Documentary, Nov 7, 2019. 16:58
In China, internet addiction is officially considered a disease. The cure? Therapy centers aka anti-addiction camps.
GLOBAL JOURNALIST: CHINA'S INTERNET ADDICTS. Global Journalist, Dec 1, 2017. 28:34
It’s hardly uncommon for parents to be worried their teenagers are spending too much time online. But in China the concern is particularly acute, where internet cafes in cities often teem with young men playing online games for hours on end. According to one 2009 survey, an estimated 24 million people in China between the ages of 14 and 29 were internet addicts. Medical authorities in most countries including the U.S. don’t recognize internet addiction as a disease. But in 2008, China’s health officials became the first to officially identify it as a clinical disorder. One outcome has been the opening of about 300 to 400 Internet addiction treatment centers. Many of the centers resemble military schools, and the patients are forced to do exercise, march to class and – of course – are barred from using the internet. These “boot camps” have generated a lot of controversy in China - in part because of allegations that young people are sometimes physically abused in them and held against their will.
HOW CHINA IS CURING TEENS OF INTERNET ADDICTION. The Young Turks, Jan 26, 2014. 5:19
"In China, teenagers' online dependency has been a significant issue for a decade. In 2007 the China Communist Youth League claimed that over 17 per cent of its 13 to 17-year-olds were addicted to the internet, the following year the country became the first to declare internet addiction to be a clinical disorder and one of the top health threats to its young people. As a result, 400 institutions have opened across the country to wean some of the 24 million young people off compulsive internet use, or "electric heroin"."
16X9 - INTERNET BOOT CAMP: SHOCKING ABUSE. Crime Beat TV, Aug 21, 2012. 5:29
16:9 travels to China for a shocking story of an internet boot camp that was supposed to reform online addiction - but left one boy dead. 9
12 HOURS/DAY - CHINA'S INTERNET ADDICTION IS OUT OF THIS WORLD. Laowhy86, Jan 11, 2024. 16:27
MUTINY IN CHINA – A COUNTRY ON THE EDGE OF COLLAPSE. The Military Show, Oct 28, 2024. 24:07
In today's video, we explore China's growing crisis: the rise of the "bai lan" movement. This trend, translating to "let it rot," sees China's youth rejecting the nation's once-grand ambitions. Frustrated by economic instability, job uncertainty, and an oppressive work culture, young adults are giving up on traditional goals like marriage and homeownership. With youth unemployment soaring and disillusionment spreading, President Xi Jinping and the CCP face a formidable challenge. Can China's leadership reverse the rot?
UNEQUAL PARENTING IN CHINA: A STUDY OF SOCIO-CULTURAL AND POLITICAL EFFECTS Sija Du and Yaojun Li, The Sociological Review, Sept 21, 2023
This study examines the parental socio-cultural and political effects on parenting practices in China. Based on the China Education Panel Survey, we construct a new typology of parenting styles – intensive, permissive, authoritarian and neglectful – and focus on intensive parenting as a particular mode in which the more privileged families in China use superior cultural and political resources to reinforce their advantages. We show that parents in higher class positions, with higher education and with membership in the leading Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tend to adopt intensive parenting as a means of securing all-round development and obtaining favourable academic achievement for their children.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380261231198329#bibr28-00380261231198329
WHY ARE CHINESE MOTHERS MORE CONTROLLING THAN AMERICAN MOTHERS? “MY CHILD IS MY REPORT CARD” Child Development, 2015, Florrie Fei-Yin Ng, Eva M Pomerantz, Ciping Deng
Chinese parents exert more control over children than do American parents. The current research examined whether this is due in part to Chinese parents' feelings of worth being more contingent on children's performance. Twice over a year, 215 mothers and children (mean age = 12.86 years) in China and the United States (European and African Americans) reported on psychologically controlling parenting. Mothers also indicated the extent to which their worth is contingent on children's performance. Psychologically controlling parenting was higher among Chinese than American mothers, particularly European (vs. African) American mothers. Chinese (vs. American) mothers' feelings of worth were more contingent on children's performance, with this contributing to their heightened psychological control relative to American mothers.
There is much evidence that when parents exert control over children by pressuring them or intruding into their thoughts, feelings, and behavior (e.g., with directives and commands), children suffer psychologically (for a review, see Grolnick & Pomerantz, 2009). The large proportion of the evidence comes from research conducted in Western countries, predominantly the United States. However, over the last decade, it has become clear that parents' control undermines children's psychological adjustment in other parts of the world as well (e.g., Barber, Stolz, & Olson, 2005).
Most of the attention has been directed to East Asian countries, particularly China, where the more parents attempt to intrude into children's thoughts, feelings, and behavior (e.g., by making decisions for them about personal issues, such as what they wear and who their friends are), the more children suffer emotionally, with some evidence that such parenting also contributes to academic and behavioral problems.
The current research was guided by the idea that several aspects of Chinese culture lead Chinese parents to base their worth on children's performance more than do American parents. Specifically, we evaluated if parents' child-based worth plays a role in the difference in psychologically controlling parenting – that is, “attempts that intrude into the psychological and emotional development of the child (e.g., thinking processes, self-expression, and attachment to the parent)” (Barber, 1996, p. 3296) via such practices as love withdrawal and guilt induction.
Chinese and American Parents' Use of Control
Initial research comparing Chinese and American parenting focused on differences in authoritarian (vs. authoritative) parenting. This research yielded consistent evidence that parents of Chinese descent, whether residing in China or the United States, are more authoritarian – a parenting style generally characterized by heightened intrusiveness, hostility, and structure (e.g., rules and monitoring) – than are European American parents, who are more authoritative – a parenting style generally characterized by dampened intrusiveness as well as heightened warmth and structure. For example, research relying on parents' reports finds that Chinese parents in the United States and Taiwan are more authoritarian with children than are European American parents (e.g., Chao, 1994, 1996; Chiu, 1987; Kelley & Tseng, 1992; Lin & Fu, 1990). Similarly, children in Hong Kong report their parents as more authoritarian and less authoritative than do European American children (Leung, Lau, & Lam, 1998).
What I appreciate about your work here, is you are candid without being rude, disrespectful, snarky. That’s quite a special talent in today’s paradoxical world.