BBC Eye Investigations
BBCWhen Zhang Junjie was 17 years old, he decided to protest outside his university against the rules set by the Chinese government. Within days he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and treated for schizophrenia.
Junji is one of dozens of people identified by the BBC who were taken to hospital after protesting or filing a complaint with the authorities.
Many of the people we spoke to were given antipsychotic medications, and in some cases electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), without their consent.
There have been reports for decades that hospitalization was being used in China as a means of detaining dissenting citizens without involving the courts. However, the BBC has found that the problem the legislation sought to solve has recently returned.
Junji says he was tied up and beaten by hospital staff before being forced to take medication.
His ordeal began in 2022, after he protested China's harsh lockdown policies. He says his teachers spotted him after just five minutes and called 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 centre, but was actually a hospital.
“The doctors told me I had a very serious mental illness… Then they tied me to a bed. The nurses and doctors told me over and over again that because of my views on the party and the government, I must be mentally ill. It was terrifying.” He told the BBC World Service. He's been there for 12 days.
Junji believes his father felt forced to hand him over to the authorities because he worked for the local government.
Just over a month after being released from the hospital, Junji was arrested again. In defiance of the Chinese New Year fireworks ban (a measure implemented to combat air pollution), he filmed a video of himself lighting fireworks. Someone uploaded it online and the police were able to link it to Junjie.
He has been accused of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble” – a charge often used to silence criticism of the Chinese government. Junjie says he was involuntarily hospitalized again for more than two months.
After being discharged from the hospital, Junjie was prescribed antipsychotic medications. We saw the prescription – it was for aripiprazole, which is used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
“Taking the medication made me feel like my brain was a mess,” he says, adding that the police would come to his house to check that he was taking the medication.
Fearing being hospitalized for a third time, Junjie decided to leave China. He told his parents he was going back to university to pack his room, but in fact he fled to New Zealand.
He did not say goodbye to family or friends.
Gunji is one of 59 people the BBC has confirmed – either by speaking to them or their relatives, or by looking at court documents – who have been admitted to hospital for mental health reasons after protesting or challenging the authorities.
The Chinese government has acknowledged the issue, with the country's 2013 Mental Health Law aiming to stop this abuse, making it illegal to treat someone who is not mentally ill. It also explicitly states that admission to psychiatric care must be voluntary unless the patient poses a danger to himself or herself or others.
In fact, the number of people being held in mental hospitals against their will has risen recently, a prominent Chinese lawyer told BBC World Service. Huang Xiuetao, who participated in drafting the law, blames weak civil society and a lack of checks and balances.
“I have encountered many similar cases,” he says. “The police want power while evading responsibility.” “Anyone who knows the flaws of this system can exploit it.”
An activist named Ji Lijian told us he was treated for mental illness without his consent in 2018.
Legian says he was arrested for attending a protest for better wages at a factory. He says the police interrogated him for three days before transferring him to a psychiatric hospital.
Like Junge, Legian says he was prescribed antipsychotic medications that impaired his critical thinking.
After a week in the hospital, he says he refused to take any more medication. After fighting with staff and being told he was causing trouble, Legian was sent for electroconvulsive therapy – a treatment that involves passing electrical currents through a patient's brain.
“It was pain from head to toe. I felt like my whole body wasn't my body. It was really painful. An electric shock was on and then off. An electric shock was on and then off. I blacked out a few times. It felt like it was me.” Die,” he says.
He says he was discharged from the hospital after 52 days. He now has a part-time job in Los Angeles and is seeking asylum in the United States.
In 2019, a year after Lijian was hospitalized, the Chinese Medical Association updated its guidelines for ECT, stating that it should only be given with consent, and under general anesthesia.
We wanted to know more about doctors' involvement in such cases.
Talking to foreign media like the BBC without permission could get them into trouble, so our only option was to go underground.
We booked telephone consultations with doctors working in four hospitals that, according to our evidence, were involved in involuntary admissions to hospital.
We used a made-up story about a relative who was hospitalized for posting anti-government comments online, and asked five doctors whether they had encountered cases of patients sent by the police.
Four of them confirmed this.
“The psychiatry department has a type of admission called ‘troublemakers’,” one doctor told us.
Another doctor, from the hospital where Junji was detained, appears to corroborate his story that police continued to monitor patients once they were discharged from the hospital.
“The police will check you at home to make sure you are taking your medication. If you don't take it, you could be breaking the law again,” they said.
We contacted the hospital in question for comment but they did not respond.
We were able to access the medical records of democracy activist Song Zae-min, who was hospitalized for the fifth time last year, which shows how closely political views are linked to psychiatric diagnosis.
“Today, he was… talking a lot, speaking incoherently, and criticizing the Communist Party. Therefore, he was sent to our hospital for inpatient treatment by the police, doctors, and the local residents' committee. This was a forced admission to the hospital.” She says.
We asked Professor Thomas J. Schulz, president-elect of the World Psychiatric Association, to review these notes. He replied:
“For what is described here, no one should be forcibly accepted or treated against their will. This reeks of political abuse.”
Between 2013 and 2017, more than 200 people reported being wrongfully hospitalized by authorities, according to a group of citizen journalists in China who documented violations of the mental health law.
Their reporting ended in 2017, because the group's founder was arrested and then imprisoned.
For victims seeking justice, the legal system seems against them.
A man we call Mr. Lee, who was hospitalized in 2023 after protesting against the local police, attempted to take legal action against the authorities over his imprisonment.
Unlike Junjie, doctors told Mr. Lee that he was not ill, but the police arranged for an outside psychiatrist to evaluate him, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, and he was detained for 45 days.
Once released, he decided to challenge the diagnosis.
“If I don’t sue the police, it will be as if I accept that I am mentally ill,” he says. “This will have a huge impact on my future and my freedom because the police can use it as a reason to lock me up at any time.”
In China, records of anyone diagnosed with a serious mental health disorder can be shared with the police and even local residents' committees.
But Mr Lee was not successful, as 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 would be locked up in a mental hospital.”
The BBC found 112 people listed on the official Chinese Court Decisions website who, between 2013 and 2024, attempted to take legal action against police, local governments or hospitals over such treatment.
About 40% of these plaintiffs were involved in filing 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 police have “too much discretion” in dealing with “troublemakers”, according to Nicola McBain of Exercising Rights, a human rights organization in London.
“Sending someone to a psychiatric hospital, bypassing the procedures, is a very easy and very useful tool for local authorities.”
Chinese social mediaAll eyes are now on the fate of vlogger Li Yishui, who accused a police officer of sexual assault. Yixue was said to have recently been hospitalized for the second time after her social media posts about the experience went viral. It is reported that she is now under surveillance in a hotel.
We have submitted the results of our investigation to the Chinese Embassy in the UK. She said last year that the Chinese Communist Party “reaffirmed” that it must “improve the mechanisms” related to the law, which it says “explicitly prohibits illegal detention and other methods of depriving citizens or unlawfully restricting personal freedom.”
Additional reporting by Georgina Lam and Betty Knight
