Hang Doggy, Eat Doggy, or Vaccinate Doggy?

From the Wall Street Journal:

Outbreak of Rabies
Mars the Comeback
Of Canines in China

Killing of 50,000 Rural Dogs
Angers Urban Pet Lovers;
A Puppy as Second Child

By NICHOLAS ZAMISKA
August 8, 2006; Page A1

MOUDING, China -- Late last month, an 11-year-old boy walked his little black puppy to its execution. The thought of its impending death made him cry. By giving up his pet, the boy was ensuring that it would be hanged -- a more humane fate than having it snatched away and beaten to death in the street, as was happening to other dogs.

At a local well, the boy surrendered his pet, named "Xiao Hei," or "Little Black." A nearby sign pledged $2 for each delivered dog. "I loved the dog like my mother," says the boy, Zhou Hongwei.

Little Black was one of 50,000 dogs slaughtered last month in Mouding, a county in southwestern Yunnan province. Authorities ordered the killings in response to a rabies outbreak that killed several people and sickened 360. Virtually every dog in Mouding has been hanged, beaten to death or otherwise killed.

"Mouding County government tried to prevent the rabies epidemic but later found that it's hard to control it," a deputy party chief of Gonghe village in Mouding said in a telephone interview. "The county government then made the dog-killing decision."

Yet Mouding County officials are discovering that dogs -- for decades shunned as a symbol of capitalist decadence -- are gaining status in the new China. The killings provoked outrage across the nation, spawning more than 15,000 comments on China's most popular Web site, Sina.com. "Puppies didn't do anything wrong," read a typical comment from a Chinese Web surfer.

Even Communist Party-backed newspapers attacked the Mouding move as "extraordinarily crude" and "cold-blooded." With the Internet spreading news of the killings around the world, the animal-rights group PETA called for a boycott of all Chinese products, and tens of thousands of surfers signed an online petition urging the U.S. ambassador to China to recommend widespread rabies vaccinations across that country.

In rural China, where vaccinations aren't always performed on people, let alone dogs, further slaughter lies ahead. Officials from Jining city in central Shandong province say they plan to kill all dogs within about three miles of each village where rabies has been detected, the official Xinhua news agency said Friday, estimating that 500,000 dogs could be at risk.

But in urban China, dogs increasingly are being registered, vaccinated and pampered beyond the imaginings of those raised amid the hardships of the early communist years. When 41-year-old Dong Jianlin was a child, "We didn't even have that word -- 'pet,'" he recalls.

Last Friday, Mr. Dong accompanied his 20-year-old daughter, Li Yunying, to a pet market in the bustling provincial capital, Kunming, where she bought a rust-colored Pomeranian for around $50 and mulled over which color food bowl to buy. "A lot of superstars on television have dogs," says Ms. Li, wearing a shirt with the word "Woof" across the chest in gold and silver sequins. "It's a kind of trend."

"We are getting richer and richer," her father says of the Chinese. "So we have extra money to raise pets."

Yet pets aren't just a product of Chinese affluence. They also serve as surrogate second children in a country where the one-child family is official policy and brothers and sisters are still a rare concept. Chinese people want pets "because we don't have many babies in the house, and because children are lonely, and they have nobody to play with," says Lei Xiaoqin, who runs a pet store. The name of the pet store, Dou Le, derives from the Chinese translation of America's popular dog-food brand, Purina. She decided to open the store after her doctor told her he was able to sell nine puppies at a local market for more than 10,000 yuan, or about $1,200.

Pet popularity is most pronounced in China's richest cities. Beijing alone is home to 500,000 registered pet dogs, according to Fei Yuehai, an official at the Beijing-based China National Kennel Club, but he reckons the total figure is about three times that, given the cost of registration. A pet dog's registration could cost from 600 to 1200 yuan -- $75 to $150, according to China's Ministry of Public Security. After registration, pet owners need to pay 300 to 600 yuan every year to get an annual review.

In Beijing, pet owners who want to spoil their charges can take them to the Jingcheng Tianshi Pet Hospital, one of some 500 pet clinics in the city. For about $15, the hospital offers a makeover that includes a hair trim, ear cleaning, a pedicure and a shower.

Christina Peng, 24, figures she and her boyfriend spend about $75 a month taking care of their Alaskan Malamute, Qiqi, who "only eats the most expensive brands" of pet food, Ms. Peng says. They bought Qiqi half a year ago as a companion for the boyfriend's mother after his father passed away. "My boyfriend is the only child, and both of us are busy working and don't have enough time to stay with her," says Ms. Peng.

Ms. Peng fumes at what happened in Mouding and wonders why the government doesn't use the money it earns from pet registration to provide free rabies vaccines. "Every time my Qiqi gets shots at the hospital, I can't look at his pathetic eyes," she says, "so I could imagine the horror suffered by the dogs in Mouding. This is outrageous!"

Chinese royalty once prized dogs, particularly the tiny Pekingese. But following the triumph of communism in 1949, dogs suffered the same fate as royalty. Ideologues frowned on dogs, cats and other pets as frivolous symbols of class and of capitalist decadence. A national ambivalence toward dogs is still evident today in meat markets of southern China, where skinned dog carcasses hang on large hooks next to slabs of beef and pork.

To many in rural China, the killings didn't come fast enough. "I wish they had killed the dogs earlier because this is a disaster for human beings," says Mr. Shi, a 44-year-old tobacco farmer in Mouding who declined to give his first name. His wife died late last month, after being bitten by her brother-in-law's dog.

Traditional funeral decorations still line the walls of his home. When asked about those who denounced the killings, he says, "They don't know how serious this disease is."

--Cui Rong and Zhou Yang in Beijing and Tang Hanting in Shanghai contributed to this article.

Write to Nicholas Zamiska at nicholas.zamiska@wsj.com¹

Copyright 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit http://www.djreprints.com/.