China’s ‘Internet Addiction’ Schools Are Now Locking Up Adults

In March, a 21-year-old music student in Beijing arrived at an apartment complex to teach a piano lesson. Waiting for her were her father, her aunt, and two employees of a private disciplinary institution. Her relatives told her the strangers were police officers investigating a family matter. Instead, they forced her into a vehicle, confiscated her phone, and drove her hundreds of miles to an institution in Henan province, where she spent the next 11 days.

According to Southern People Weekly, her parents objected to her romantic relationship and believed their once-obedient daughter had become difficult to manage. They paid the institution to isolate her, monitor her daily life, and pressure her into ending the relationship. Public reporting indicates that this institution charged 26,800 yuan (around $4,000) for six months or 36,800 yuan for a year, including room and board.

The incident reflects a broader transformation in an industry once associated almost exclusively with treating so-called “internet addiction.” A July investigation by China Newsweek documented several adults placed in similar institutions by their own families. One 21-year-old man said his parents paid for a facility to “correct” his sleeping habits. A 25-year-old woman living alone reported being taken from Jiangxi to a disciplinary institution in Hubei after relatives and staff entered her home and confiscated her phone. Another investigation by Jiemian News found adults as old as 33 living alongside teenagers in one behavioral correction school.

These institutions emerged during the 2000s, amid national anxiety over youth “internet addiction.” Many gained notoriety for military-style discipline and physical punishment before public criticism pushed the industry to rebrand as family education centers, behavioral intervention programs, or youth development organizations. The name has changed; the business model has simply expanded to adults whose life choices conflict with parental expectations. Romantic relationships, gaming, unemployment, unconventional careers, and irregular sleeping habits can all become reasons for intervention.

China’s Criminal Law makes it a crime to unlawfully deprive another person of personal liberty, punishable by up to three years in prison. A June commentary in The Beijing News made the point bluntly: a contract authorizing “military-style management” is not a valid defense. If its terms conflict with the law, the outlet argued, the contract itself is void – no matter how much paperwork a family signs beforehand.

In practice, enforcement tells a different story. Lyu Jin, who had turned to gig work delivering food after being laid off, was intercepted by five men his mother had hired after he failed to meet her expectations of “stable employment and marriage.” He flagged down police at a highway checkpoint while being transported to a facility in Chongqing; officers stopped the vehicle but released it after his escorts produced an authorization letter signed by his mother. Lyu Jin is an adult; his parents had no legal basis to sign away his rights. But the police let them do it anyway.

Legally, adulthood in China begins at 18; parents have no authority over where their adult children live or whom they date. Socially, and evidently in the eyes of some local police, parental responsibility is often understood to continue well past that threshold, especially for only children in whom families have invested heavily. The law is applied differently if a parent, rather than a stranger, is the one arranging the involuntary confinement. 

That is where these institutions find their market. They sell forms of control that parents can no longer exert over their adult offspring: transportation, isolation, restricted communication, tightly controlled daily routines, and constant supervision. In effect, parents are paying these institutions to force their children to acquiesce to their demands.

As long as a signed parental contract can function, in effect, as a shield against prosecution, these institutions will keep expanding to justify whatever behavioral “corrections” parents want made.