In a rare move, Chinese state-controlled media The Beijing News on Feb. 3 reported on widespread abuses inside psychiatric hospitals in China’s Hubei province, revealing practices that include the unlawful detention of patients, fabricated diagnoses, prolonged refusal to grant discharge, and suspected fraud involving public health insurance funds.
However, for petitioners and human rights activists in China, the revelations came as no surprise. Multiple interviewees told The Epoch Times that such psychiatric institutions have for years been used as a convenient mechanism to silence people who petition against the government. Despite the latest media scrutiny, they say, the practice has not stopped.
The interviewees spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity, or asked that only their surnames be published, for fear of reprisal.
In China, petitioning is an administrative system for hearing complaints and grievances from the public. Many petitioners travel to Beijing to seek justice for their grievances.
Targeting Petitioners
Li, a petitioner from Wuhan, told The Epoch Times that he has been repeatedly confined to psychiatric hospitals over the past decade after protesting the forced demolition of his home.In an interview on Feb. 4, Li said that whenever he attempted to take his grievances to Beijing, local authorities moved quickly to intercept him.
“Sometimes, I’d just arrive in Beijing and be sent straight back,” he said. “Other times, before I could even explain why I was there, I was taken directly to a psychiatric hospital.”
Once inside, Li said, medical diagnosis was irrelevant.
“Doctors didn’t listen to anything I said,” he recalled. “They tied me up and forced me to take medication three times a day. I had no idea what the drugs were—only that my limbs went weak, my reactions slowed, and my mind became foggy.”
Li said he knows several petitioners who were confined for years. One man, Xu Wu, was detained in a psychiatric hospital for four years beginning in 2008. After escaping to Guangzhou and speaking to a local Chinese newspaper, Xu was detained again and transferred to a psychiatric facility.
Among the petitioners whom Li has encountered, involuntary psychiatric detention is far from rare. Their complaints range from land seizures and labor injuries to miscarriages of justice.
“As long as you don’t comply and refuse to stop [petitioning], the psychiatric hospital becomes their easiest option,” Li said.
A human rights activist from Liaoning province told The Epoch Times that local authorities have also used psychiatric hospitals against those who sue or petition the government. One of the most prominent cases involves Zhu Guiqin, a woman who has pursued legal redress for more than two decades.
According to the activist, Zhu was again committed in June 2024 to Kangning Psychiatric Hospital in Fushun, China. Family members later told the activist that she was beaten, tied to her bed for extended periods, forcibly medicated, and placed in restraining garments.
Contact with Zhu has since been lost. “Her phone has been switched off,” the activist said. “In that region, if you sue the government, you can be taken straight into a psychiatric hospital.”
When The Epoch Times contacted the Fushun Public Security Bureau, which oversees Zhu’s case, the officer said on the phone that further information could be provided only if the reporter appeared in person with a referral letter.
Legal Protections Go Unenforced
Zhang, a legal professional and rights advocate in Hubei who has long tracked cases of involuntary psychiatric detention, said such practices violate China’s own Mental Health Law.Under the law, police have no authority to forcibly commit a person without a medical diagnosis, judicial assessment, and family consent. In practice, Zhang said, those safeguards are routinely ignored at the local level.
Sending petitioners to psychiatric hospitals, he explained, offers officials a cleaner alternative to criminal or administrative detention.
“It’s far easier than formal arrest,” Zhang said. “There’s no public trial, no written judgment, and almost no accountability. From the outside, it’s very hard to trace responsibility.”
He noted similar cases among petitioners from other provinces. In some instances, individuals later became nationally known symbols of repression, such as Dong Yaoqiong—also referred to as the “Ink Girl” from Hunan—who was detained in a psychiatric hospital after protesting against Chinese leader Xi Jinping by splashing ink on a poster of Xi.
Chinese official agencies and state media have frequently cited estimates that more than 100 million people in China suffer from some form of mental disorder, with more than 16 million classified as having severe mental illness.
Human rights advocates stress, however, that cases of forced psychiatric detention fall outside any legitimate medical framework because the individuals have not been medically or judicially determined to be mentally ill.
