China: Animal welfare - The Economist

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Animal rights in China

 

 

A small voice calling

 

Feb 28th 2008 | BEIJING

From The Economist print edition

 

 

The stirrings of a new protest movement

 

 

HUMAN rights, or the lack of them, have long been

a focus of China's critics at home and abroad.

But a new rights movement­complete with

idealistic local and foreign campaigners­is stirring: animal rights.

 

Animals are treated dreadfully in Chinese farms,

laboratories, zoos and elsewhere. There are grim

factories where thousands of live bears in tiny

cages are tapped for medicinal bile. At safari

parks, live sheep and poultry are fed to lions as

spectators cheer. At farms and in

slaughterhouses, animals are killed with little concern for their suffering.

 

According to Zhou Ping, of China's legislature,

the National People's Congress, few Chinese

accept that animals have any rights at all. She

thinks it is time they did, and in 2006 put

forward China's first national animal-welfare

law. Her proposal got nowhere, and there is no

sign of progress since. “There is so far”, she

says, “only a small voice calling for change.”

 

Louder voices get short shrift from China's

rulers. Even People for the Ethical Treatment of

Animals (PETA), an activist group based in

America, known for its robust approach, treads

lightly in China. Its advertisements, featuring

Chinese stars, are more playful than shocking. It

is also working quietly with local officials, for

example advising police in Nanjing on handling

stray dogs­a growing problem in many Chinese

cities where the keeping of pets, once rare, is becoming widespread.

 

Some Chinese animal-rights activists hope this

trend heralds greater benevolence toward animals.

One vegan activist and rock musician in Beijing,

Xie Zheng, has adopted the slogan “Don't Eat

Friends” to persuade people not to eat meat. That

may be harder than getting them to forgo furs or

bear-bile medicines. Vegetarian restaurants are

spreading, but many patronise them to be trendy rather than ethical.

 

Campaigners are not discouraged. Jill Robinson, a

Briton, spends most of her time in Sichuan

province, caring for bears rescued from bile

farmers, who are compensated in return for

shutting down their operations. She says support

from local young people is rising fast, and

attitudes are starting to change. If China can

stop binding women's feet, she asks, why should

it not abandon cruelty to animals?