Local governments in China have stepped up dog-catching operations after a 2-year-old girl was mauled by a Rottweiler in the southwestern city of Chengdu earlier this month, sparking a huge online backlash as some responded by beating the animals to death or taking away beloved pets.
On one side of the issue are people who have been bitten or frightened by one of China’s estimated 55 million stray dogs. They mostly blame irresponsible pet owners for abandoning animals they can no longer care for, according to social media comments reviewed by Radio Free Asia.
On the other side is a fast-growing community of pet lovers and animal rights activists who have spoken out publicly against animal cruelty, including the Yulin dog meat festival, and blame the government for failing to properly regulate dogs and their owners in the first place.
Earlier this month, the Chongqing University of International Business and Economics suspended one of its security guards after he reportedly beat a dog to death, admitting that he had engaged in “inappropriate behavior” while “dealing with a stray dog”.
Such killings, which were also reported during Shanghai’s 2022 lockdown, don’t enjoy widespread public support. A recent survey by journalist Wang Zhi’an found that only about 10% of Chinese people support culls as a way to deal with problems caused by stray or undisciplined pets.
Vigilante-style reactions
Some incidents have prompted vigilante-style reactions from animal lovers, according to a police report from the southwestern city of Guiyang, which detained five people for questioning after they harassed a local man who beat a pet dog to death after it jumped on his 6-year-old daughter.
“People should maintain a rational and peaceful attitude online and consciously resist online violence,” police said in a statement about the incident, adding that the man had beaten the unleashed corgi to death with a shovel on Oct. 23 after the dog “jumped” on his daughter as he took her to school.
“If these dog lovers really love dogs, they should take better care of them,” read one comment under the story. “These people … dare to upload a video of themselves telling a little girl what a bad person her father is,” said another.
The Guiyang dog killing came just days after a Rottweiler attacked a 2-year-old girl, leaving her with a ruptured kidney, broken ribs and multiple lacerations, sending shockwaves across the country.
While the owner was arrested, the governments of Anhui and Henan provinces immediately launched “civilized dog ownership” campaigns, warning owners that any dogs found unleashed in public would be taken away by dog-catching teams.
The Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily called for similar campaigns across the country in a commentary reprinted by the ruling Chinese Communist Party newspaper The People’s Daily.
“Local authorities must of course take measures to prevent similar incidents from happening locally and becoming the focus of public opinion,” the commentary said.
And officials aren’t the only ones responding to such calls.
The China Small Animal Protection Association said on its WeChat account that private dog catchers are now taking in pets in the eastern city of Wuxi, while reports have also circulated that a dog was killed in a dormitory at the Sichuan Vocational College of Science and Technology.
Anything but civilized
Chen Kuide, executive chairman of the Princeton China Society, said dogs and other animals often run afoul of China’s legal system and also fall victim to social tensions.
“People’s behavior tends to go along with the law of the land,” Chen said of the private killing of animals. “The government has clearly not publicly addressed the widespread killing of dogs.”
Animal rights activists have repeatedly told Radio Free Asia that local government campaigns for “civilized dog ownership” are themselves anything but civilized, and often end with beloved pets being beaten to death or shipped off to animal shelters without the knowledge of their human families.
According to prominent Chinese-American writer Geling Yan, dogs in China are too often the victims of mass “clean-up” campaigns rooted in collective trauma and political malaise.
“I couldn’t help but think of all the ‘strike hard’ campaigns against dogs that I have personally experienced,” Yan wrote in a commentary for RFA Mandarin in response to recent anti-dog campaigns.
“They all seemed to happen when people in China were in a bad mood, with a dark fire raging in their hearts.”
Yan’s childhood pet dog, Xiao Huang, was beaten to death during the “Four Purges” political movement under Mao Zedong that paved the way for the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.
Extension of mutual betrayal
Yan would also soon lose another pet dog, “Little Fatty,” “Mahua,” an egg-laying hen, and a Tibetan mastiff named Koler to another wave of politicized violence known as the “Cut off the Tail of Capitalism” movement in the following years, she wrote.
“In retrospect, the persecution of dogs was an extension of the mutual betrayal and harm caused by this movement,” Yan wrote.
“This kind of retaliatory harm gives rise to dark passions and unleashes the worst aspects of human nature,” she said. “So can I speculate that the dog extermination campaigns that began a week ago were caused by people’s sense of helplessness and powerlessness caused by the zero-COVID policy and its end, by [being forced to] lie down, and other collective behaviors?”
“This feeling of insecurity, fear, a kind of nameless fire, a nameless hatred generated by all these negative feelings has finally found a target, and now they are venting it, once again, against mankind’s most loyal and speechless companion, the dog,” she wrote.
She said that persecuting a creature even more unlucky than oneself can make people feel like they are one of the lucky ones again, and that dog-hunting campaigns have been going on in one form or another since her childhood.
Counterfeit rabies vaccines
Gong Zengheng, founder of the U.S.-based animal rights group Duoduo Project, which campaigns against the dog and cat meat trade, said such dog extermination campaigns are “crude and barbaric” and stem from a lack of proper regulation of pet ownership.
Gong called for a crackdown on counterfeit rabies vaccines, which have hampered efforts to control the disease in some parts of the country and contributed to widespread fear of stray dogs.
She said local officials and police should also be trained to better handle stray animals.
“China has been promoting the idea of civilized cities, so I really hope the government will include civilized dog ownership as an important part of that,” she said.
Singapore-based X commentator Jeffrey Li said those making China’s laws may live in high-end communities that don’t have a stray dog problem, and therefore may be out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people.
He said growing economic inequality is likely contributing to a nationwide problem with empathy for other people, “let alone compassion for pets.”
“There has long been a gap between dog owners and non-dog owners, and now it has exploded,” Li said.
