While the global conversation about the Internet and China tends to focus on censorship, hacking and the Great Firewall , many Chinese parents are worried about a far different problem: addiction.

Thats because thousands if not millions of Chinese parents have watched their children get sucked into a vortex of gaming marathons and endless chat room conversations. Gamers -- most of them young men -- sometimes spend days or even weeks at Internet cafes, subsisting on minimum sleep. Some teens have even committed suicide and killed in the name of gaming. One Chinese expert has estimated the number of Internet addicts in the country at 24 million .