A 14-year-old boy obsessed with phone sex has killed himself in northwest China's Gansu Province, leaving his parents with endless sadness and a phone debt of 1,800 yuan (about US$229).

 

Li Hongbin, from a village of Qingyang City, killed himself by drinking pesticide he had bought early last month after a local telephone company clerk came to his home asking for the bill to be paid.

 

Li, who dropped out from school last year and didn't have a job, started to call phone-sex numbers last August.

 

The family's phone bill was 16 pages. The longest call was over four hours long, police said. The most frequent telephone number he called was 96296.

 

The 1,800-yuan bill was a tremendous burden on Li's family as both parents are disabled. The whole family relied on Li's father who did manual labor in a city.

 

"I don't know who I should blame for his death," Li's father sobbed.

 

A local telecommunications staff member, who declined to reveal his name, said phone sex services have expanded rapidly in recent years. Some tempt customers with advertisements that play on men's sexual fantasies with lines such as "the sweet beauty's first night."

 

The calls cost three yuan (US$0.38) a minute, according to a boss at one of the phone-sex services. Advertisements of the phone sex services can easily be found in the telephone books and newspapers.

 

Li's death again raised alarms about the environment in which Chinese young people are growing up. China has been cracking down on pornographic and illegal publications in recent years to clean up its "social environment." Monitoring phone sex lines is included in the campaign.

 

Teenagers, who are known to have an elevated libido, often find it hard to resist the temptation of phone-sex services, according to education experts who say telephone operators and government departments should also take responsibility.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 2, 2006)