Outsourcing Parenting: What Happens When Chinese Teens Are Sent to Boot Camps?

This summer, a string of cases drew attention in China: teenagers, and in some instances adults, being taken -- sometimes by force -- to private boot camps purporting to cure internet addiction, rebellion or depression. One 21-year-old man described being bundled from his home in Guizhou to a Chongqing facility, where he was locked up for eight days at his parents request.

Behind the scenes, these camps often share infrastructure with vocational or secondary schools. In Yongchuan, Chongqing, several education-consulting firms have registered at the same vocational school campus -- some leasing space from the school, others run by people closely tied to school leadership. A 16-year-old girl named Li was taken from a bus she had boarded to visit a hairdressing school and dropped instead at a closed-door facility where her phone was confiscated and she was told she would stay for six months.

Li says she spent three months there under military-style routines -- 7 a.m. wakeups, drill training, mandatory gratitude education where students wash their parents feet and kneel in front of them. When she asked whether students were beaten, the answer was not. She later learned that beatings, suspended-punishment drills, and other punishments did happen, often outside camera view.

Parents, many exhausted by their child depression or school refusal, often sign contracts without fully understanding the facility. A Shenzhen mother, Zhang, paid 25,000 yuan a month for a center run by a person holding an applied psychology masters degree. Her 12-year-old daughter was taken away by staff posing as district education officials, never to be contacted again except through monitored visits. The girl later told her mother she was deeply unhappy inside.

Whistleblowers and victims describe a pattern: promises of 24-hour monitoring are used for marketing, while punishment takes place in monitored-blind spots; parents are fed edited reports; and complaints filed with education bureaus or police are often dismissed. In one case, after a child was released, the mother filed 50 pieces of evidence of fraud, illegal detention and abuse -- and police declined to open a case.