By Lin Meilian

"This is a pre-death party. Let me lead you to the hall of death."

Announcements like these litter QQ, China's most popular instant messaging client online message board where strangers meet and arrange to commit suicide together.

"I want to die. Who wants to join me?" posted a 22-year-old university student surnamed Zhang from Lishui, a prefecture-level city in southwestern Zhejiang Province, on June 21.

Soon a 20-year-old freshman surnamed Fan from Shanghai had accepted his invitation.

Zhang had reportedly failed to obtain an offer from a good university, according to the Qianjiang Evening News.

Fang and Zhang met at the Lishui railway station on the morning of June 22 and decided to kill themselves by inhaling carbon monoxide.

They brought charcoal, a brazier and beer and locked themselves inside a hotel room with closed windows.

As smoke filled the room, Zhang suffered an unbearable headache and decided to abandon the plan. He tried to talk Fan out, but he insisted on staying.

Zhang left the hotel about 4:30 pm. Fan called later and pleaded for him to return and see their pact through.

"Listen, if you don't bring charcoal and alcohol back by 8 pm, I'll call the police. I'm between a rock and a hard place now. I'll leave it up to you," was Fan's last text message.

Zhang didn't go back. When he called the hotel at about 10:50pm, it was too late.

At least five people died last year after participating in a growing underworld of QQ instant messenger groups with names like "suicide group" or "die together" where people - mostly young people - gather to chat and plan their own deaths.

Parent company Tencent is now blocking or deleting information from QQ groups about suicide pacts after Zhejiang Province People's Court in December 2010 ordered it to bear 10 percent of the responsibility - 55,612 yuan ($8,347) - in a civil case regarding university students meeting online to commit suicide.

Fan's parents blamed Tencent for not censoring harmful words, including "suicide."

"It's the first time the court sentenced an Internet service provider for failing to exercise their duties as they have an obligation to control the use of harmful words," said Liu Changqiu, a Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences researcher.

This is a party before death," reads a message on the instant messaging board. "Let me lead you to the hall of death. Photo: www.qq.com 

Tencent refuses to censor

Tencent's lawyer argued in court that it didn't have the right to monitor messages, the Zhejiang-based Morning Express reported. Not only that, but QQ has more than 500 million users making it is impossible to monitor or supervise.

Suicide messages remain easy enough to find on major forums such as tianya.cn.

"I really want to kill myself! I'm going to jump off a 15-story building. It only takes a few seconds. Easy," wrote an Internet user on January 15.

"I'm waiting now. After midnight, I'm going to swallow all the pills I have at home," another Internet user posted.

Tencent and Tianya aren't alone. Google also has suicide message boards including one where two strangers met and arranged to die together in a gas-filled car, the London-based Daily Mail reported in September.

A spokesman reportedly defended Google's involvement saying "While the Internet's a great source of information, some content can be distressing."

In the last 45 years recorded suicide rates have increased by 60 percent worldwide. On average, almost 3,000 people commit suicide daily, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

"Although traditionally suicide rates are highest among elderly males, rates among young people have been increasing to such an extent that they are now the group at highest risk in a third of countries, in both developed and developing nations," the organization reported. Impulsiveness plays an important role in suicide in Asian countries, WHO warned.

Members of the group seek out company to join in on their suicide efforts. Photo:www.qq.com

Youth male death craze

Suicide is the main cause of death among people aged between 15 and 34, responsible for 19 percent of all deaths in that age group, according to the Ministry of Health.

Men aged 20-29 were found to be at high risk in Singapore, where suicides among young people aged 10-19 increased from 12 in 2008 to 19 suicides in 2009, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Some 146 teenage South Korean students committed suicide last year and since 2003 the annual number of teenage student suicides has always been over 100, according to the country's education ministry.

Na?veté plays a crucial role, according to a psychology expert from Huazhong Normal University in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province.

"You can't blame them because they don't have a good example to learn from," said Tao Hongkai. "Those violent online games have a bad influence on young people.

"Many don't really want to kill themselves. They do it for fun, because in those games you can always come back to life."

Chen Lan, 82, a retired English teacher from Yongkang, Zhejiang Province, has joined several QQ suicide groups.

"I feel really sorry for them," he said. "I want to save their lives."

Suicide crossed Chen's mind after he broke his legs three years ago. With no one to look after him, he simply lay in bed watching TV talent shows.

"I was moved by watching those young people striving to make their dream come true," Chen said. "Then I changed my mind."

Early last year when he heard young people were seeking out strangers to die with, he decided to join suicide groups and find out if it was true. To his amazement, Internet users freely discussed methods of killing themselves.

Profiteers sell pills

Even more surprising to Chen was the discovery that some people were actually trying to profit from suicidal young people.

"Some people intentionally talked people into killing themselves by selling them poison at 300 yuan a gram," he said.

One day in July, a 20-year-old man with the online nickname of "a lonely lamp on a rainy night" posted that he wanted to die in the chat room.

Chen approached him saying he was a pretty girl who would like to talk to him in person before he died. The man agreed to meet.

When the "pretty girl" turned out to be a wrinkly old man, the angry young man ran off. Pursued by Chen, he eventually stopped and talked.

Chen said he has already talked four people out of killing themselves and 30 people into quitting suicide groups.

Not everyone welcomes Chen's interventions. He has received anonymous phone threats, the caller warning him to stay out of it.

"I told him 'I'm old and I don't care. You're still young and if you killed me, you might ruin your life,'" he said. "Then he hung up."

Chen set up an anti-suicide QQ group in July to expose discussions of members of suicide QQ groups in many forums and chat rooms. Tencent recently shut down his group in its sweep at suicide-related QQ groups.