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(Image: CEN)

He did it to make a secret documentary on the practice which will embarrass Chinese President Xi Jinping who is currently in the UK on a state visit.

The harrowing documentary will compound pressure on China during a visit which has already been clouded by criticism of his country's human rights record.

The documentary reveals how the activist Chen Wei is electrocuted, drugged and beaten, and even told his homosexuality was either a curse from his dead parents who were haunting him - or caused by grief over his dead pet parrot.

(Image: CEN)

There are reportedly thousands of clinics containing everything from quack doctors through to exorcists in China, claiming that they can cure homosexuality and help gay men and women return to "normal lives".

As he undergoes the abuse, brave Chen from the capital Beijing secretly filmed what was going on.

He approached the clinic claiming that he was confused about his sexual orientation and did not understand why he was attracted to other men.

In the documentary, Chen Wei is exposed to dangerous electric shock therapy and drugs, which the clinic's doctor promised would cure his "disease" within three days.

(Image: CEN)

Chen Wei noted that a man in charge of the clinic, who called himself Director Zhong, and a doctor named Wang Kuixing, said that his sexual preference was the result of an illness caused by "meridian obstruction" - a term used in traditional Chinese medicine to describe the disruption of "life energy" and blood flow in one's body.

The treatment for this, which has since been described as wizardry or even exorcism, involves injections of collagen into so-called "blocked" acupuncture points, followed up a series of religious rituals aimed at "driving away evil spirits" - at the cost of more than £1,000.

In a 20-by-20 room, Zhong "murmured" enchantments at Chen Wei and hit him on the head, back, and shoulders over 20 times.

The program also reveals that after a psychological assessment, the so-called doctors claimed his homosexuality was somehow linked with the loss of a pet parrot.

Zhong said a parent had also come back to haunt Chen Wei, and that they were "back for revenge" although it was not specified why.

(Image: CEN)

The documentary concluded with Chen Wei unsurprisingly reporting that all efforts to "convert" his sexual preference were unsuccessful. On the contrary, they had left him traumatised.

The controversial clinic exposed a rarely documented underground industry of "treatment centres", which have reportedly tried to treat some 1,600 people for homosexuality.

None however has come forward to say that they have been "cured".

The Chinese Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disease in 2000, and a ground-breaking first ruling against a "gay conversion" clinic was also witnessed in December 2014.