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Zhang Po was barely one year out of school when an out of control mine-cart barrelled into him deep in a pit in Anhui province, causing injuries that ended his brief career as a coalminer. Since the accident in 1999, he has been living off disability allowances provided by his former employer in Huainan, Anhui’s coal city. But in 2024 Zhang was sent to hospital once again – this time to a psychiatric ward.
Zhang was sectioned for 22 days in June after he protested outside the office of his former employer, demanding an increase in his disability allowance. “I endured more than 20 days of humiliation in there. There was no phone, and my belt and shoelaces were taken away,” Zhang said in a recent interview with Chinese media. Zhang said that he was forced to take medicines and tied to his bed for several hours a day. After the three weeks in hospital, he was sentenced to eight days of administrative detention for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.
After local media picked up Zhang’s case, his story went viral. Related hashtags were viewed nearly 40m times on Weibo after it was first reported in April. “If even the law cannot stop a mental illness diagnosis, how can ordinary people prove themselves to be normal?,” wrote one commentator. “When power can arbitrarily define madness and non-madness, everyone will live in fear of disappearing!”
Zhang’s case is not isolated. More than a decade after China passed a groundbreaking mental health law that was supposed to eliminate such abuses, victims and activists say that the practice of involuntary hospitalisation remains common, with a weakened civil society limiting the ability of people to defend their rights.
Zhang Youmiao, no relation of Zhang Po, is “still trying to process” their experience of being sectioned in 2018 and 2019. “I still feel upside down,” says Zhang, now 26.
In 2018, Zhang was a vocational student living with their parents and studying car repairs in Xi’an, the capital of central China’s Shaanxi province. For years, Zhang’s family and their neighbours had been waiting for compensation for the demolition of hundreds of houses in their urban village that had been slated for reconstruction.
In August 2018, Zhang joined a small protest outside the provincial government. They were swiftly arrested and Zhang was later taken to a psychiatric hospital. Their hands and feet were tied to the bed and they were forced to take medicine twice a day. “I tried not to swallow those pills by hiding the medicine between my teeth and my cheek and spitting it out afterwards,” Zhang recalls. Zhang says that their parents were persuaded to consent to the treatment after the police said that Zhang’s gender identity – Zhang identifies as non-binary – could represent a mental illness.
A system ripe for abuse
China’s mental health law, passed in 2012, allows authorities to detain “troublemakers” without the consent of the person or their relatives. A person may be involuntarily hospitalised if they pose a risk of harm to themselves or others. Other countries, including the UK, have similar legal provisions. But in China, many fear that the system is ripe for abuse as there are few checks and balances. A recent BBC investigation found that criticising the Chinese Communist party could be grounds for a psychiatric diagnosis.
Huang Xuetao, a lawyer who is an expert on the treatment of mentally ill and disabled people, says that the law should be reformed so that no one can be deprived of their rights. “The idea behind ‘being labelled mentally ill’ implies that it is unjust to deprive civil rights from someone without a mental illness – but acceptable if the person truly has one. This very mindset sustains the structural trap within the psychiatric system. Those who hold such beliefs are complicit. Unless this belief is fundamentally challenged, abuses of psychiatry that violate human rights will inevitably continue,” she says.
Zhang Youmiao was detained for seven days before being released, although they were later sectioned again for 15 days, without the consent of their parents. The doctors had been sympathetic, with one even quietly suggesting to Zhang that they could apply for political asylum in a foreign country. “That was something I’d never heard of,” Zhang says. “I didn’t view my behaviour as political, I was just protecting my rights.”
Chinese law states that if a person is hospitalised involuntarily, they should have a diagnosed psychiatric condition. Zhang says they didn’t receive a formal diagnosis in either of their spells in hospital. They do not have hospital records from that time, but provided documentary evidence to support other elements of their account.
Zhang never formally complained about their treatment. “I was frightened, I was afraid of being put into jail or a psychiatric ward again. I even doubted myself, I thought that maybe I was the root cause of the problem”.
Zhang left China in 2023 and is now applying for asylum overseas.
‘Why can’t I point out what they did wrong?’
Others have sought accountability from the Chinese system. More than 100 people attempted to bring legal cases related to involuntary hospitalisation against hospitals, police or local governments between 2013, when the mental health law was enacted, and 2024. Few succeed.
In 2024, Shenzhen-based lawyer Zeng Yuan sued her local public security bureau after she was sectioned for four days after a dispute with local police. Zeng had smashed a sign in the police station, venting her frustration at their failure to help her contact her estranged father and handle a barrage of online harassment she had been receiving in relation to her job. Zeng lost her case, despite the fact that the Shenzhen health commission ruled that her medical records and behaviour “did not fully support a diagnosis of severe mental disorder”.
Zeng represented herself in her legal case. “If you directly accuse the government of violating the law, it’s basically impossible to find a lawyer in the commercial field who will represent you,” she said. Huang’s NGO, the Equity and Justice Initiative, used to provide legal aid to people bringing civil rights complaints, often funded with the help of donations from overseas. But tightened laws on foreign funding “has severely impacted our ability to do these cases”, she said.
Some victims turn instead to the court of public opinion. After Zhang Po went to the media with his story, the local city government said they would investigate his complaint. Zeng publishes blog posts on WeChat about her experience, which are swiftly censored. But she remains hopeful that public pressure might have an impact. “Maybe one day in the future, the court can overturn the verdict,” Zeng says. “Since I’ve experienced such behaviour, why can’t I point out what they did wrong? I don’t need to swallow my anger. I don’t need to remain silent.”
China’s ministry of public security and national health commission could not be reached for comment.
Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu
