Peter J. Li, PhD, is associate professor of East Asian politics at the University of Houston-Downtown and a China policy specialist at Humane Society International. Click to see author's profile.
In China’s city of Dalian, a quarter million people staged a massive protest in response to a number of high-profile cruelty cases. As the climax of the event, a huge banner was displayed. It read: “Build a Beautiful China, Punish Animal Abusers.”
Yulin, notorious as it is, cannot be expected to lead to a national dog meat trade ban. Yet the Yulin authorities can use China’s existing laws and regulations as a weapon against dog slaughter.
House Resolution 752 calls on the Chinese authorities to shut down the Yulin Dog Meat Festival and to ban the dog meat trade. The resolution is not a war of culture against China. The bond between companion animals and humans is not Western, but trans-cultural.
Chinese culture does not sanction the cruelty of the Yulin Dog Meat Festival. The rise of the dog meat industry was a result of the 20th century reform politics initially aimed at lifting peasants out of poverty. It is time that China parts with the policy that judges the merits of an economic activity solely by its productivity.
This month, China’s National People’s Congress is soliciting public comments on a draft revision of the Wildlife Protection Law. Ironically, the law, supposedly designed to protect wildlife species, has witnessed the enormous rise of a wildlife exploitation industry unlike anything in China’s past.