Addiction to the internet has been diagnosed as an official disorder by officials in China, it has been reported.

It emerged that the superpower plans to register the condition with the World Health Organisation after Beijing's health ministry officially approved it.

An expert on the diagnosis, Tao Ran of Beijing's Military General Hospital, said that a number of special psychiatric units had been established in hospitals across the country to treat "addicts" in an experimental phase to be rolled out across the nation.

Mr Tao continued: "China finds itself at the forefront of this research because we were among the earliest to set up clinics [...] we had a sufficient sample of patients so that we could carry out proper scientific analysis."

The original Centre for Internet Addiction Recovery was established by Dr Kimberley Young in 1995, travelling around the world to deliver seminars and discussions on the effects of the internet on all age groups.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.