Activity

Some clarifications on the draft revision to China’s Wildlife Protection Law (WPL)

China’s National People’s Congress produced a draft revision to the Wildlife Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (WPL) adopted in 1989. This draft revision was result of years of Chinese public pressure for revising this law that had proved to be toothless. Worse still, the law was believed to be responsible for the out-of-control wildlife exploitation, wildlife eating, and transnational wildlife crimes involving Chinese businesses and individuals. When China’s congress initiated the effort to revise the law in September 2013, Chinese scholars, experts and the concerned public were hopeful that a new and revised law would eliminate provisions sanctioning and endorsing wildlife use. When the draft revision was put out for public comment on January 1, the concerned Chinese public was utterly disappointed. The draft revision, instead of eliminating provisions endorsing wildlife use, wildlife farming, and wildlife breeding, it reaffirms wildlife use as one of the objectives of the law.

Wildlife exploitation and wildlife use including wildlife breeding have been endorsed in the exsiting Wildlife Protection Law. The draft revision does not legalize wildlife use as some reports have had us believe. The draft revision simply reaffirms wildlife breeding and wildlife use endorsed in the current Wildlife Protection Law. In other words, the draft revision has failed to create a new legal framework that would outlaw wildlife use. It simply reaffirms it. Therefore, the draft revision is, in the words of a Beijing expert, “a total waste of the taxpayers’ money” and a shameful “window-dressing” to deceive the Chinese people and international critics.

Several factors might have obstructed the revision efforts in the interest of wildlife protection. First, the drafting team is composed of people who are NOT qualified. At least, one of the members on the drafting team has no knowledge of the ecological value of wildlife protection and is not aware of China’s part in the global wildlife crisis. Second, the drafting team has done a poor job in soliciting information from wildlife experts. Third, the drafting team has paid more attention to the voices of the wildlife industry representatives who have been aggressively lobbying the relevant parties in the course of the revision efforts.

There might be other factors. But, the drafting team composed of staffs not qualified to tackle this highly specialized subject can be a major contributing factor. One effort that the drafting team could have done but did not do is this: It should have come up with a statistics on the number of people employed in wildlife use industry as opposed to the total number of workers in the country and it should have come up with the total revenue of wildlife use industry against China’s annual GDP to determine if (1) banning wildlife use industry would affect the livelihood of the majority of the Chinese people and (2) if banning wildlife use industry would undermine the Chinese economy as a whole. In other words, is the wildlife use industry benefits the majority of the Chinese people or is it benefitting the owners of the wildlife farming operations? With these statistics in mind, the drafting team member will realize how unsophisticated they are when they repeat the claim of the wildlife use industry owners that ending wildlife use will affect the livelihood of the Chinese people.