Fw: China's Dog Policy

[Guest guest]

from the New York Times

 

March 19, 2001

 

Beijing Journal: Hiding From Police is a Dog's Life

 

By ERIK ECKHOLM

 

Erik Eckholm/ The New York Times

A Beijing girl plays with her family's dog, accompanied by a friend. The

family cannot afford the license fee.

(photo)

 

BEIJING, March 18 . The elderly couple were happily keeping Little Lala,

a white Pekinese, for a friend.

 

They had heard that the Beijing police were engaged in one of their

dreaded " dog sweeps, " seizing animals whose masters did not pay the

exorbitant license fees or dogs that appeared on the street during the

forbidden daylight hours, barked loudly, had grown too tall or had

otherwise broken the city's draconian rules.

 

The couple assumed that Little Lala was legal because their friend had

obtained a license near his home, on the far side of town. But early on a

recent morning, as the woman held Lala near the entrance to their

government housing compound, a truck raced up and a policeman and four

assistants jumped out and grabbed the animal.

 

Her husband heard his wife's shouts and rushed down with the dog's

papers, but the policeman said, " This license is of no use in this

district, " the tearful couple recalled.

 

The 71-year-old man and his 65- year-old wife tussled with the five,

trying to get the dog back. The man was thrown to the ground and then, as

the couple and several bystanders watched in horror, the police officer

slammed Little Lala on the cement, killing her and spattering blood onto

the woman's torn shoes.

 

" They were bandits! " said the man, still in bed with an aching body

several days later.

 

The couple's experience was extreme: usually, the police take seized dogs

to an overcrowded pound for destruction. And in this case a senior police

official came by later to apologize and bought the woman new shoes, even

as he reminded the couple that dogs can stay only in the district where

they are registered.

 

But the incident fairly illustrates the growing tensions that have

accompanied the rising ownership of dogs here, a trend that marks China's

social progress but also its contradictions.

 

The harsh law, adopted in late 1994, is intended to hold down the city's

canine population. It reflects a desire to protect apartment dwellers

from nuisances and a traditional sense that dogs waste resources and are

mostly a hobby of the rich.

 

Many dog owners argue that the law has been counterproductive. Far from

curbing pet ownership, it led to a swelling canine underground of

unlicensed and sometimes unvaccinated dogs.

 

In the decades of Maoist political campaigns and economic scarcity, few

city people dared contemplate owning a pet any bigger than a cricket or a

bird.

 

In today's open social climate and comparative prosperity, dogs are

increasingly popular for the same reasons that people anywhere keep a

pet: as a companion for adults, or a playmate for an only child.

 

Yet because of the confining rules, the booming dog population remains

almost invisible in the city's main districts.

 

According to city records, 94,000 dogs are legally registered. But at

least as many more ? some people think several times more ? are believed

to be kept furtively. Many go unlicensed because of the $600 registration

fee, plus $240 every subsequent year ? unthinkable sums with most

families' monthly incomes a few hundred dollars at most.

 

While dogs are indeed a rage among Beijing's emergent yuppies, the Su

family may be more typical. The father works in a state factory, the

mother has a small business and they live with their 8-year-old daughter

in a single narrow room in a crumbling old city neighborhood.

 

 

They got their Pekinese ? named Pipi, or " naughty boy " ? mainly to keep

their daughter company after school. " When I get home I can hug him, " the

girl said. But the parents, too, love to play with the frisky little pet.

 

They take Pipi out only at night, in the narrow alleys around their home

where many neighbors also take their unlicensed dogs for quick walks. Did

they think of registering Pipi? " Of course not, " said the mother. " If

they want to take your dog they do it whether you have a license or not. "

 

In late 1994, when the city's " Law to Strictly Control Dog-Raising " was

adopted, the explanation by a deputy director of public security was

telling. The police official, Zhang Liangji, sounded almost apologetic

for not banning dogs altogether.

 

" Some people hold, " he told the Beijing legislature, " that keeping dogs

in the city is hazardous to people's health, endangers people's lives,

disturbs public order, destroys the environment and sanitation of the

city, disturbs people and corrupts social morality.

 

" Big dogs could do harm to people, so they should be banned. But small

dogs are pets just like fish and birds. It is not proper to ban dogs

totally, but it is proper to have restrictions on keeping them. "

 

So dogs over 35 centimeters (13.8 inches) tall are not allowed. A family

is permitted only one dog, and may walk it only between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m.

The remaining 13 hours of forbidden time, owners complain, play havoc

with house-training, and some dogs pace inside frantically.

 

Walking dogs is forbidden in nearly all public places, and they may not

ride in elevators, forcing some people to carry their animals up and down

multiple flights of stairs.

 

As the elderly couple learned, enforcement can be capricious. An office

worker in another government housing compound said a flyer was suddenly

posted in mid-February barring dogs there. " No one has come to enforce

it, and we're all hoping this is not serious, " she said. But in the

meantime, her family and others have not dared to walk their dogs.

 

In the suburbs the rules are more relaxed and fees are much lower,

leading many city dwellers to register their dogs at rural relatives'

addresses, or to use fake addresses in the slim hope that they will prove

better than nothing when the dogcatchers appear.

 

A few small private groups of animal lovers have petitioned the city and

national governments to rewrite the law, which they consider inhumane and

ineffective. The police department's dog control bureau declined a

request to discuss the law and how it is enforced.

 

But a survey sponsored by the International Fund for Animal Welfare found

that one-third of the city's unlicensed dogs were not properly vaccinated

against rabies ? a powerful argument for easing registration fees while

exercising stronger controls over breeding and vaccinations, said Grace

GeGabriel, head of the fund's China office.

 

" What they're doing now, " Ms. Gabriel said, " is punishing the dogs rather

than punishing irresponsible owners. "