Скачать или смотреть Bootcamp where China makes internet junkies go cold turkey: The military fitness regimes

Bootcamp where China makes internet junkies go cold turkey: The military fitness regimes and psychiatric assessments facing some of the country's 24 million addicts as they attempt to kick the habit

Fed up with Facebook, or coming to realise, in the words of David Cameron, ‘too many tweets might make a t**t’? It may be time to consider a short, sharp trip to the suburbs of Beijing.

Here, in a collection of drab, concrete buildings surrounding a large courtyard is a military-style bootcamp designed with one thing in mind: to treat victims of a very modern disease — a compulsive addiction to electronic gadgets.

Formed in 2006, the Daxing Internet Addiction Treatment Centre (IATC) has so far welcomed 6,000 mostly young, mostly male patients — and claims to have ‘cured’ 75 per cent of them.

The man behind the facility is Tao Ran, a doctor and colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, regarded as China’s leading expert in wangyin, or internet addiction, which is said by the country’s government to affect 24 million of its 632 million internet users.

He describes wangyin as a form of mental illness, saying that 90 per cent of his patients are clinically depressed from a lack of normal social interaction.

Many have back and eyesight problems due to spending up to 14 hours a day staring at screens, and a third suffer from eating disorders.

‘Internet addiction leads to problems in the brain similar to those derived from heroin consumption but, generally, it’s even more damaging,’ Mr Ran said recently.