Fw: Animal Welfare awareness of Chinese youth, from May 2004 ANIMAL PEOPLE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

 

Animal Welfare awareness of Chinese youth

by Peter Li, Zu Shuxian, & Su Pei-feng

 

In early 2002 five bears at the Beijing Zoo were attacked on two separate

occasions with sulfuric acid by a mysterious visitor. For months Chinese

media gave extensive coverage to the incident, including the eventual

prosecution and conviction of perpetrator Liu Hai-yang.

Coming from a single-child family, Liu Hai-yang was among China's 80

million " little emperors " who reputedly harbor an inordinate sense of

entitlement. A science major at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University,

Liu showed no signs of remorse. He questioned his detention, demanded his

release, and defended his act as a " scientific experiment. "

To animal advocates, the incident illustrated why the passage of

anti-cruelty legislation must not be delayed any longer. Yet others,

including some Chinese officials, argued that proposals to legislate

animal welfare are beyond what China is ready to accept.

The Liu case was among the topics most discussed at an October 2002

symposium on animal welfare held in Heifei, Anhui Province. Responding to

the issues raised there, with co-sponsorship from the World Society for the

Protection of Animals and the University of Houston downtown campus, we

surveyed Chinese college students to investigate whether the alleged " little

emperor " syndrome can actually be found in attitudes toward animals, and

what the prevailing attitudes toward animals are likely to be in coming

decades, as today's college students become China's future leaders.

In particular, we sought to find out whether China is ready for

animal welfare legislation.

We conducted separate surveys in 2002 and 2003. We compared our

findings to the results of a 1998 survey of Beijing and Shanghai residents

about their attitudes toward animals, sponsored by the International Fund

for Animal Welfare. Although the views of Beijing and Shanghai residents do

not necessarily reflect the entire nation, both cities and all of the

campuses whose students we surveyed attract people from all parts of China

and many different family backgrounds.

First, we sought to find out if Chinese college students now living in

a nation 27 times richer than the one they were born into are in any way

different from the rest of the society in their attitudes toward animals.

Previous studies of the " little emperor " generation have found that they are

not significantly different from other Chinese people in their value

judgments. In 1998 the Research Group for Studying the Personality

Development of China's Single-child Youth reported that the overwhelming

majority of the surveyed single-child youngsters, 84% in all, to be

sympathetic toward others.

Based on these arguments, we expected that the college students should

have similar views on animals to those held by the rest of the society.

Yet criminal acts involving college science majors have repeatedly shocked

China in recent years. Before the bear attack incident, thousands of

people were horrified when a college student in Sichuan microwaved a puppy.

Although the outcome of the act was not remarkably different from actions

commonly involved in killing dogs for meat, the microwaving incident like

the bear-torturing incidents caused many commentators to wonder whether the

Chinese educational emphasis on training technical talent might have

produced students who are deformed in character, lack moral judgment, and

are blind to their social responsibilities. We sought to find out if

Chinese science students are in general morally compromised.

Our third objective was to determine if students' attitudes are

changing over time, particularly after the emergence of Severe Acute

Respiratory Syndrome as a national crisis.

We surveyed 1,300 students in all. Our 2002 survey was distributed

at 13 universities, with a 93% return rate. Our 2003 survey was repeated

at 10 universities, with an 83% return rate. We took care to stratify our

samples so that they represented both genders, different years in school,

different disciplines, and a typical distribution of family residence

between rural and urban.

The 1998 IFAW survey found, as ANIMAL PEOPLE reported, that

Chinese attitudes strikingly resembled those discovered in surveys of U.S.

residents conducted 10 to 15 years earlier. 94% of the Beijing and Shanghai

residents surveyed believed that animals can suffer and feel pain. Only

4.9% believed otherwise. 94% also agreed that animals feel sadness and

happiness.

We found similar yet slightly stronger positive attitudes among the

college students. 98% of the respondents to our 2002 survey said that

animals have the capacity to feel pain and suffering. 96% agreed that

animals were capable of emotional expressions. These findings were

confirmed when 98.2% and 96.4% of our 2003 survey respondents agreed that

animals feel pain and have emotions. In terms of empathy for animals,

China's college students do not stand as a separate group. As a matter of

fact, our two surveys have demonstrated that the college students scored

higher in empathy for the animals than the Beijing and Shanghai residents.

Interest in animals or literature and broadcast programs about animals

do not necessarily correlate with high animal welfare consciousness. Yet,

people with such interest tend to be more knowledgeable about animals and

therefore tend to be likely to empathize with animals. IFAW found in 1998

that 79% of Beijing and Shanghai respondents expressed interest in

animal-related literary and broadcast works. Both of our surveys found that

only 70% of respondents said that they like animal-related literature and

broadcast programs, but this difference may reflect that students have less

free time than the general population for recreational reading and

television-watching. Supporting this hypothesis, 17% of the

Beijing and Shanghai residents said that while they were not particularly

interested in animal-related literature and broadcasts, they had no

objection toward them. 26% of our respondents answered likewise. Only 3%

of the Beijing and Shanghai residents and 4% of the students actively

disliked literary and broadcast works about animals.

In contrast to the disinterest in animal comfort and welfare evident at

the notorious live markets of Guangzhou and many other Chinese cities,

especially in the south and northeast, our surveys found a surprisingly low

percentage of respondents, just 2.7% and 2.5%, respectively, who saw

animal existence as being primarily for human use. 92.4% and 93% believed

that animals and their welfare deserve respect and consideration.

Among the Chinese institutions most often identified as abusive

toward animals, zoos received the strongest approval. Even so, slightly

more than half of our respondents saw zoos as prisons for the animals,

while barely more than a quarter of respondents expressed positive views of

zoos. This is the inverse of most U.S. and European findings. To be noted,

however, is that most Chinese zoos are approximately 50 years behind the

animal welfare standards advanced by the American Zoo Association.

 

Dog-eating

 

36.5% of the IFAW survey respondents believed that there is no moral

difference between eating dog meat and consuming beef or pork. Our 2003

survey found that 45% of the respondents saw dog-eating as morally the same

as consuming beef or pork.

This finding requires further study. If dog-eating has become more

acceptable to young Chinese people than to their elders, western anti-dog

meat tactics that include aspects of ethnic stereotyping and broadly

indiscriminate appeals for boycott are not only failing but are helping to

reinforce public acceptance of dog-eating as an aspect of Chinese culture.

" If younger Chinese people believe dog-eating is morally the same as

consuming beef or pork and can be brought to recognize a moral objection to

killing cattle and pigs for human consumption, " argues ANIMAL PEOPLE editor

Merritt Clifton, " then China may be significantly closer than the U.S. to

becoming a vegetarian nation as result of conscientious choice. I suggest

this because the late Henry Spira was a longtime Marxist who wrote that he

did not see dog-eating as morally different from eating other animals, if

all of them were treated well and slaughtered humanely. Spira did not have

any moral objection to meat-eating, until he became fond of a cat he was

keeping temporarily for a friend. One evening at supper he realized that

the cat and the animals he ate were morally equivalent in their capacity to

suffer. Instead of mentally constructing the differentiation between

'companion animals' and 'meat animals' that most people do, Spira put down

his fork in mid-meal, and never ate meat of any kind again. Spira went on

to become one of the most accomplished animal defenders and advocates

against meat-eating who ever lived. "

 

Eating wildlife

 

The outbreak of SARS brought international attention to the practice of

wildlife eating in China. Yet contrary to the perception of many outside

observers, both the IFAW survey and our own demonstrate that wildlife eating

is a culinary sub-culture. IFAW found that 38% of Beijing and Shanghai

respondents had eaten wild animals in the recent past. We found that only

24% of the college students we surveyed in 2003 survey had eaten wildlife in

recent years.

Both the IFAW survey and ours reflect the overall frequency of practices

which appear to vary greatly by region. An opinion poll conducted later in

2003 by the Shanghai #2 Medical Sciences University Public Health Institute

found that among 400 Shanghai residents, 83% had eaten wildlife.

Reappraising the IFAW findings to presume that Shanghai residents

responded comparably in 1998 and 2003 produces the inference that virtually

all of the wildlife eaters polled by IFAW were from Shanghai.

To find out if Chinese college students are apathetic toward routine

acts of cruelty by animal use industries, which are easily observed

because they are not illegal, we asked respondents to identify from a list

of 10 acts those that they consider unacceptably cruel:

 

Act 2002 2003

Raising meat dogs in small cages 30% 32%

Using animals in a circus 39% 44%

Eating live monkey brains 89% 90%

Putting on a monkey show 57% 63%

Skinning quail alive 75% 74%

Force-watering before slaughter 60% 63%

Scaling fish alive 57% 59%

Caging wild birds 52% 54%

Shooting live targets 90% 89%

Sterilizing pets 42% 44%

 

We included sterilizing pets, actually phrased as " de-sexing pets, "

because it is widely perceived in China as a cruelty. Street dogs and feral

cats have been few in China since the famines of the 1950s and 1960s,

resulting in low awareness of any need to control pet reproduction.

Among the 1,082 respondents to the 2003 survey, the majority identified

more than four acts as cruel. Only 2.3% of respondents checked just one

act; 71% identified five or more.

IFAW found that 97%, 92%, and 94% of Beijing and Shanghai respondents

said they philosophically supported Chinese wildlife protection

organizations, international environmental groups and international animal

welfare organizations. We found 95% philosophical support for animal

protection in 2002, and 94% in 2003.

But philosophical support tends to stop short of active

participation. 48% of our 2002 respondents said that they were willing to

participate in pro-animal activities, as did 51% in 2003. Actual

participation is obviously far lower than that. Few nations offer as many

easily accessible opportunities to help animals as the U.S., but while 31%

of U.S. residents enjoy watching wildlife, according to U.S. Fish & Wildlife

Service surveys, and approximately two-thirds live with either dogs or

cats, only one U.S. household in four donates to animal protection causes,

which receive less than 2% of all U.S. charitable donations.

The highest levels of volunteerism on behalf of animals documented

among the U.S. public were found in surveys of California householders done

in the mid-1990s by Karen Johnson of the National Pet Alliance. Johnson

found that one household in 10 fed homeless cats. At the time that was

approximately the same number of households that fed wild birds. Since

then, the U.S. feral cat population has fallen sharply, while bird-feeding

is believed to have tripled in popularity, but most bird-feeders appear to

feed birds more to enhance their viewing opportunities than out of a belief

that the birds would otherwise starve.

Actively participating in animal protection is discouraged in China by

a combination of economic, ideological, and political factors. Economic

growth is the top priority of government. Protesting against cruel

industries often brings direct conflict with local growth opportunities,

and may be seen as a challenge to social order. The Chinese Communist Party

since taking power in 1949 has often derided animal lovers for allegedly

" worshipping the decadent Western bourgeois life-style " and for being

alleged " members of the 5th column of Western imperialism. "

Our 2003 survey included two questions about students' awareness of

wildlife breeding in China. The objective was to determine if the students

were also aware of the cruelty associated with such practices as " farming "

bears for their bile.

IFAW reported in 1998 that only 30% of Beijing and Shanghai residents had

ever heard of bear bile farming. We discovered that 40% of our student

respondents are aware of it, largely through the work of the Animals Asia

Foundation's China Bear Rescue Project.

More than 87% of the IFAW respondents and 90% of our 2003 survey

subjects recognized bear bile farming as cruel when it was described to

them.

Influence of SARS

Our surveys did not find different attitudes toward animals among science

students, in comparison to social science and liberal arts counterparts.

The interest of science students in reading about animals and watching

television programs about them was higher, at 72%, than among non-science

majors (65%). Otherwise our surveys found no significant variations.

The SARS crisis, however, may have helped to accelerate an attitudinal

shift in favor of animals that was already underway. Months after the

official end of the epidemic, we could still see increasing recognition that

unbridled exploitation of wildlife and other animals not only jeopardizes

Chinese wildlife resources but also puts human welfare at risk. 13% of our

2002 survey respondents said that their formerly unfavorable attitudes

towards animals had changed after SARS.

Admittedly, our surveys highlighted the challenges ahead for the

Chinese animal advocacy community. Yet we also confirmed that Chinese

attitudes toward animals are moving, on most issues, in a markedly more

favorable direction.

 

Peter (Jianqiang) Li is an assistant professor of political science

at the University of Houston, downtown campus.

Zu Shuxian is a professor of epidemiology and social medicine at the

Anhui Medical University in Anhui, China.

Su Pei-feng is director of the China office of the World Society for

the Protection of Animals.

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--

Kim Bartlett, Publisher of ANIMAL PEOPLE Newspaper

Postal mailing address: P.O. Box 960, Clinton WA 98236 U.S.A.

CORRECT EMAIL ADDRESS IS: <ANPEOPLE

Website: http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/ with French and Spanish

language subsections.

 

 

 

 

Something to think about: We believe that the Golden Rule

applies to animals, too. We don't accept the prevailing notion that

" people come first' " or that " people are more important than animals. "

Animals feel pain and suffer just as we do, and it is almost always humans

making animals suffer and not the other way around. Yet in spite of how

cruelly people behave towards animals -- not to mention human cruelty to

other humans -- we are supposed to believe that humans are superior to other

animals. If people want to fancy themselves as being of greater moral

worth than the other creatures on this earth, we should begin behaving

better than they do, and not worse. Let's start treating everyone as we

would like to be treated ourselves.