“Unity is strength, our spirit is stronger than steel” . . . several dozen teenagers stand on a parade ground to chant communist slogans in unison before turning together to march to the canteen for lunch.

This is no military training camp, though. It is a clinic for young internet addicts.

At China’s first such centre, teenagers spend a minimum of three months being weaned off their obsession with cyberspace. The Juvenile Psychological Growth Base can treat about 100 children at a time — barely scratching the surface in a country where 10 million children from among the 340 million internet population are deemed to be addicts.

China’s treatment of internet addiction has been mired in controversy; about 400 improperly licensed boot camps have sprung up, many inflicting brutal violence on their young charges. The reported deaths of two teenage boys over the summer at such institutions has shocked the country, while a third youngster is in hospital with kidney failure from severe beatings.Tao Ran, the director of the clinic just outside Beijing, says that the violence comes as little surprise: “Almost all these children have real psychological problems. They can have behavioural difficulties and the teachers are not trained to handle them. They regard these children as disobedient and do not understand that they are not well.”

The camps that have mushroomed are for-profit institutions that see their inmates as a source of income. The need for regulation of the schools is urgent, Dr Tao says. “The Ministry of Health must recognise this type of addiction and there must be more co-operation with the Ministry of Education so that these schools can be stopped.”

State media revealed this week that the family of Deng Senshan, 15, had received one million yuan (£90,000) in compensation after he was beaten to death within hours of his admission to a camp in southern China. Parents of a 14-year-old boy who died of acute renal failure after being beaten at a camp in central China are to receive 350,000 yuan. The money will be paid by the local education bureau.

Yao Jun, 37, the father of the second boy, said: “The money will not ease the agony of losing our son. We can only hope this tragedy will ring an alarm for parents and the Government to avoid such incidents.”

The Health Ministry banned the use of electric shock therapy for internet addiction last month as questions began to be raised about the quality and methods of many of the camps.

Dr Tao says that as many as 40 per cent of the teenagers he admits suffer from attention-deficit disorder. “This is an illness, but the teachers at these unregulated schools don’t know about this.” His clinic has treated nearly 5,000 children. He puts his success rate at about 70 per cent. The teenagers he treats rise at 6am and undergo running exercises and drills before therapy sessions that last all day, sometimes interrupted by an hour in the pool, before lights out at 9.30pm.

“We try to make sure that they don’t have any free time to get into trouble,” Dr Tao says.

“My parents don’t care about me,” said one 15-year-old boy, slumped in a chair and dressed in a military camouflage T-shirt and trousers. “I ask them for clothes but I’ve been here for 28 days and they only brought me a pair of sports shoes. How long will I be here? There’s no way I can get out before the 90 days are up.

“Yes, I think I may spend too much time on the internet, but I want to be a software developer. Yes, I do have a problem, but the food here is awful. There’s no chocolate.”

Are you addicted?

Experts say the definition of an internet addict is based not on the amount of time a person spends online but on the impact of the online activities on his or her life. You may be addicted to the internet if:

• your use is compulsive

• you are preoccupied with being online

• you cannot control or curb your online habits

• you lie or hide the extent of your online behaviour your internet use interferes with other parts of your life such as work, family, relationships or school

• you regularly use the internet to alter your mood

Source: Centre for Internet Addiction Recovery