Tricky Medical Games for China's Autistic Kids

(Beijing) – Ads for a "sophisticated digital navigation instrument" that "repairs damaged brain cells" imbued the parents of an autistic boy with so much hope that for months they regularly trekked some 800 kilometers between home and a hospital.

But the "instrument" that doctors are using to treat autism and other brain disorders at Beijing Guoji Chinese Medicine Hospital – and at least a dozen other hospitals nationwide – is neither recognized as a proper medical device by the international community nor controlled in any way by the Chinese government, a Caixin investigation has found.