Strict Chinese regulations could cost pet owners their best friend

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Strict Chinese regulations could cost pet owners their best friend

By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

11/12/2006

 

BEIJING — China already is famous for its one-child policy, which Beijing says

has curbed population growth that could stop the nation from growing rich.

 

Now, in the Year of the Dog, the Chinese capital is enforcing a one-dog policy.

The goal: to curb a pet boom among people whose bourgeois lifestyles would

horrify Chairman Mao, the Communist leader who banned pets for decades.

 

Waving banners and screaming, " Stop the slaughter! " more than 200 young Chinese,

fearful that their animals will be killed, gathered in Beijing on Saturday.

 

The noisy but peaceful demonstration also attracted at least 200 police

officers, some in riot gear. The police detained and later released at least 15

people.

 

Regulations issued last week limit each Beijing household to one dog, prohibit

owners from taking them to parks or other public areas and reinforce the ban on

large dogs — any animal with a shoulder height above 14 inches.

 

The official reasons are public safety and disease control: Rabies fatalities

leapt 30% in the first nine months of 2006. Rabies became the nation's top

infectious- disease killer, ahead of tuberculosis and AIDS, according to the

Ministry of Health. " Anyone breaking the rules will be punished, " the Nov. 6

order warns.

 

For the owners of the 550,000 dogs registered with the city and the more than

450,000 the Beijing Association for Small Animal Protection says are

unregistered, the fear of prosecution pales beside their pets' likely fate:

detention or even execution, right before their eyes.

 

" The police started house-to-house searches this month, " said Zhang Li, 24, who

was at the protest Saturday outside the Beijing Zoo. Her husky exceeds the

height rule. " I'm so worried, I can't work or live normally. The police could

kill him on the spot. "

 

Protests are rare in China's tightly policed capital. One reason is that

urbanites have profited the most from the nation's free-market revolution. Now,

these young professionals want to protect their newly won affluence, lifestyles

and rights. " Dogs are humanity's friends. These regulations are infringing our

human rights, " Zhang said.

 

The public dissent this weekend is only the campaign's opening salvo, protesters

said. They spread word about the demonstration through the Internet, even though

the government blocked some pet websites in recent days in response to their

opposition to the rules. " There will be more protests like this, " promised Xu

Chun, 25, a software programmer.

 

Xu will walk Silly, his Old English sheepdog, only after 10 p.m. to avoid the

police and informers, who receive cash rewards from police hotlines if they turn

in a big or unlicensed dog. " We want the leaders to know we are not happy and

that they must revise these unreasonable rules, " he said. " Many larger dogs are

not dangerous at all. "

 

Happy, a 9-year-old Pekingese lap dog, is neither big nor dangerous.

 

" He went blind four years ago, but I can't bear to put him down, " said Zuo

Cheng, 54.

 

Zuo fell in love with dogs when she was sent from Beijing to labor in the

countryside during Mao's Cultural Revolution. " I had a 'pig dog,' a sheepdog

that helped me look after the pigs, " she recalled.

 

When dog ownership rebounded in the 1990s, Zuo bought Happy and kept her a

secret at first. This year, Zuo took in three strays. What will happen to

Happy's friends, given the new one-dog rule?

 

" Perhaps the police will give them to other people, " Zuo said hopefully.

 

" Nonsense, " replied her husband, Li Xiaobing, 53. " They will be destroyed. "

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-12-china-onedog_x.htm