When Chinese parents outsource control over their adult children

Global Voices reports that a private industry in China has emerged to help parents control adult children they consider unmanageable — dispatching teams to abduct sons and daughters and confine them in so-called disciplinary institutions. In one case, a twenty-one-year-old music student was seized off the street in Beijing and held eleven days in Henan province because her parents disapproved of her boyfriend; in another, a twenty-six-year-old man was lured to a facility and held for eighty-two days. Institutions charge thousands of dollars and use the label "internet addiction," a recognized clinical category in China though not under the international diagnostic standard, to justify confinement for things like gaming, sleep habits, or unemployment. Police in at least one case declined to pursue criminal charges after finding "no criminal facts," leaving unresolved why an adult's report of forced confinement didn't meet that threshold.

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