Police in China detained a male pickup artist whose website offered “seduction” courses including how to emotionally manipulate women into killing themselves.

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A website which offered single men courses in manipulating women into killing themselves and referred to them as "pets" and "prey" has been shut down and its operator detained by police in eastern China.

A 24-year-old man, surnamed Xu, was detained for five days and fined 5,000 yuan (S$994) by police in Jiangsu province for fraud and "spreading obscenity" in the courses he posted online as a pickup artist, claiming to teach seduction skills to socially inept men.

The website contained blog posts and courses with names like "Encouraging Suicide" via emotional manipulation, "Keeping Her as a Pet" and "Crazy Extortion", according to a police statement posted on Thursday on Weibo, China's microblogging platform.

The latter course taught men how to pretend to be successful and accomplished in order to "seduce inexperienced women into giving them money and material goods", while other courses advised men on how to use physical violence to conquer women into submission.

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A screenshot of a WeChat conversation posted on the website showed a man bragging that he "wanted women to kill themselves to prove they loved [him], as [he] really liked the feeling of thin women killing themselves because of [him]".

The police said the teaching courses and their related chat groups had been "completely wiped out".

"Criminals use obscure means of expression to evade attack … and both challenge society's morals and the legal bottom line, seriously threatening all internet users and especially female internet users' legal rights and interests."

The police statement said being a pickup artist was not a crime, but the measures were in line with the government's domestic internet clean-up drive announced last year, which some activists have claimed is aimed at suppressing free speech.

Pickup artists have been a growing phenomenon in China in recent years, with their services sought out by single men who have trouble finding a romantic partner.

As a result of the one-child policy introduced in 1979, Chinese men outnumber women by roughly 33 million, according to government data from 2017.

Numerous pickup artist training centres and online courses costing thousands of yuan have flourished, promising to teach socially inept and romantically inexperienced men how to seduce women.

Some dating coaches and pickup artists claim to teach men the social skills and emotional intelligence to approach women, while others have been criticised for advocating techniques to coerce women into sex.

Chinese feminists have described their teachings as manipulative and misogynistic - a charge that has also been aimed at Western pickup artists.

Last year, Chinese internet giant Tencent shut down social media accounts and messaging groups associated with the pickup artist organisation "Enjoy Girls Legion" after The Beijing News revealed its members had used the techniques to emotionally abuse more than 20 women.

"It's an emotionally manipulative art form and causes deep harm to people. Women must be aware and be on guard! I support cleaning the whole internet [of this]," said one highly rated comment on Weibo.

Another said: "Five days' detention and a 5,000 yuan fine … is this covert encouragement? Why is the punishment so light for something that spreads negative energy? Their … main ideology has already seriously harmed women's personal safety, kind of like a slow rape."

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.