BBC Eye Investigations
When Zhang Junjie was 17 years old, he decided to protest in front of his university against the rules made by the Chinese government. Within a few days, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and treated for schizophrenia.
Junjie is one of dozens of people identified by the BBC who have been hospitalized after protesting or complaining to the authorities.
Many of the people we spoke to were given antipsychotics, and in some cases electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), without their consent.
For decades, there have been reports of hospitalization being used in China as a way to detain dissenting citizens without involving the courts. However, the BBC has revealed that the problem the legislation sought to tackle has recently returned.
Junjie says hospital staff tied him up and beat him before he was forced to take medication.
His ordeal began in 2022, after he protested China’s harsh quarantine policy. He says his teachers spotted him after only five minutes and contacted his father, who brought him back to the family home. He says his father called the police and the next day – on his 18th birthday – two men took him to what they claimed was a Covid testing center but was actually a hospital.
“The doctors told me that I had a very serious mental illness… Then they tied me to the bed. Nurses and doctors repeatedly told me, because of my views on the party and the government, then I must be mentally ill. It was terrifying” , he told the BBC World Service. He was there for 12 days.
Junjie believes his father was forced to hand him over to the authorities because he worked for the local government.
Just over a month after he was fired, Junjie was arrested again. Defying the Chinese New Year fireworks ban (a measure introduced to combat air pollution), he recorded a video of himself setting them off. Someone posted it online and the police were able to connect it to Junjie.
He was accused of “picking fights and creating trouble” – a charge often used to silence criticism of the Chinese government. Junjie says he was again forcibly hospitalized for more than two months.
After he was discharged, Junjie was prescribed antipsychotics. We saw the prescription – it was for aripiprazole, which is used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
“Taking the drug, I felt like my brain was in chaos,” he says, adding that the police would come to his house to check if he had taken it.
Fearing a third hospitalization, Junjie decided to leave China. He told his parents he was going back to university to pack a room – but, in fact, he had run away to New Zealand.
He didn’t say goodbye to his family or friends.
Junjie is one of 59 people the BBC has confirmed – either by speaking to them or their relatives, or by reviewing court documents – who have been hospitalized for mental health issues after protesting or challenging the authorities.
The problem has been acknowledged by the Chinese government – the country’s Mental Health Act of 2013 aimed to stop this abuse, making it illegal to treat someone who is not mentally ill. It also expressly states that psychiatric admission must be voluntary unless the patient poses a danger to himself or others.
In fact, the number of people being held against their will in mental health hospitals has increased recently, a leading Chinese lawyer told the BBC World Service. Huang Xuetao, who helped draft the law, blames the weakening of civil society and a lack of checks and balances.
“I have come across many cases like this. The police want power, but avoid responsibility,” he says. “Anyone who knows the flaws of this system can abuse it.”
An activist named Jie Lijian told us he was treated for mental illness without his consent in 2018.
Lijian says he was arrested for attending a protest demanding better wages at the factory. He says the police questioned him for three days before taking him to a psychiatric hospital.
Like Junjie, Lijian says he was prescribed antipsychotic drugs that impaired his critical thinking.
After a week in the hospital, he says he refused more medication. After fighting with staff and being told he was causing trouble, Lijian was sent for ECT – a therapy that involves passing electrical current through the patient’s brain.
“The pain was from head to toe. My whole body felt like it wasn’t mine. It was really painful. Electric shock on. Then off. Electric shock on. Then gone. I passed out several times. I felt like I dying,” he says.
He was fired, he says, after 52 days. He now has a part-time job in Los Angeles and is seeking asylum in the US.
In 2019, a year after Lijian said he was hospitalized, the Chinese Medical Association updated its ECT guidelines, stating that ECT should only be administered with consent and under general anesthesia.
We wanted to learn more about the involvement of doctors in such cases.
Speaking to foreign media like the BBC without permission could get them into trouble, so our only option was to go undercover.
We scheduled telephone consultations with doctors working in four hospitals that, according to our evidence, deal with involuntary hospitalizations.
We used the fictional story of a relative who was hospitalized for posting anti-government comments online and asked five doctors if they had ever come across cases of patients referred by the police.
Four confirmed that they did.
“The psychiatric ward has a type of admission called ‘problem patients,'” one doctor told us.
Another doctor, from the hospital where Junjie was held, appears to corroborate his story that police continued to monitor patients after his release.
“The police will check on you at home to make sure you are taking your medication. If you don’t, you could be breaking the law again,” they said.
We reached out to the hospital in question for comment, but they did not respond.
We obtained access to the medical records of democratic activist Song Zaimin, who was hospitalized for the fifth time last year, which clearly shows how closely political views are linked to psychiatric diagnosis.
“Today…he talked a lot, spoke incoherently and criticized the Communist Party. Therefore, the police, doctors and his local committee sent him to our hospital for inpatient treatment. It was forced hospitalization,” it said.
We asked Professor Thomas G Schulze, President-elect of the World Psychiatric Association, to review these notes. He answered:
“Because of what is described here, no one should be forcibly admitted and treated against their will. This smacks of political abuse.”
Between 2013 and 2017, more than 200 people reported being wrongly hospitalized by authorities, according to a group of citizen journalists in China who documented abuses of the Mental Health Law.
Their reporting ended in 2017 as the group’s founder was arrested and then imprisoned.
For victims seeking justice, the legal system seems to be stacked against them.
A man we call Mr. Li, who was hospitalized in 2023 after protesting against local police, tried to take legal action against the authorities over his imprisonment.
Unlike Junjie, doctors told Mr. Li he was not sick, but the police then arranged for an outside psychiatrist to examine him, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, and he was detained for 45 days.
After he was released, he decided to challenge the diagnosis.
“If I don’t sue the police, it’s like accepting that I’m mentally ill. It will have a big impact on my future and my freedom because the police can use it as a reason to lock me up at any time,” he says.
In China, information about anyone ever diagnosed with a serious mental disorder could be shared with the police and even local population committees.
But Mr. Li failed – the courts rejected his appeal.
“We hear our leaders talking about the rule of law,” he told us. “We never dreamed that one day we might be locked up in a mental hospital.”
The BBC found 112 people listed on China’s official court decisions website who between 2013 and 2024 tried to take legal action against the police, local authorities or hospitals over such treatment.
About 40% of those plaintiffs were involved in complaints against the authorities. Only two won their cases.
The site appears to be censored – five other cases we investigated are missing from the database.
The problem is that the police enjoy “considerable discretion” in dealing with “problems”, according to Nicola MacBean of The Rights Practice, a human rights organization in London.
“Sending someone to a psychiatric hospital, bypassing procedures, is too easy and too useful a tool for local authorities.”
Eyes are now focused on the fate of vlogger Li Yixue, who accused the police officer of sexual assault. Yixue is rumored to have recently been hospitalized for a second time after her social media posts about the experience went viral. It is reported that he is now under surveillance at the hotel.
We have presented the findings of our investigation to the UK Chinese Embassy. Last year, it said the Chinese Communist Party had “reaffirmed” that it must “improve mechanisms” around the law, which it says “expressly prohibits illegal detention and other methods of unlawfully depriving or restricting the personal freedom of citizens.”
Additional reporting by Georgina Lam and Betty Knight
