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Participants take part in a Pride Run, an event of the ShanghaiPRIDE LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) celebration in Shanghai, June 13, 2015. Reuters/Aly Song

A 22-year-old Chinese gay activist, who went undercover to “conversion clinics” in China for a British documentary, has found that these clinics still use ineffective and dangerous therapies such as electric shocks to reduce the homosexual urges of gay Chinese men.

John Shen had a hidden camera which recorded a nurse telling him in Mandarin that his conditional reflex upon seeing another person of the same gender is to feel love. The nurse told Shen that he must instead feel scared.

Shen is seen twitching in bed while undergoing the electric shock therapy in the documentary aired on UK’s Channel 4 "Unreported World" series, reports Times of India.

In another clinic filmed at the port city of Tianjin, a doctor tells another undercover gay activist, “Can you bear this kind of pain? How long can you bear it? If you can really bear with it then you can change.”

In 2001, the Chinese Psychiatric Association delisted homosexuality from its list of mental ailments. However, because of family pressure on their sons and daughters to have children, Chinese parents continue to patronise those clinics in an attempt to change the sexual preferences of their gay and lesbian kids. Chinese courts have banned the therapies and considered inhuman.

Shen estimates there are about 30 million LGBT Chinese citizens, with more coming out as the Asian giant becomes more westernised and accepting of homosexual relationships.

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