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【中文标题】中国动物的权利
【原文标题】Animal Rights In China
【登载媒体】福布斯
【原文作者】Michael Charles Tobias
【原文链接】http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2012/11/02/animal-rights-in-china/
Peter J. Li，休斯顿城市大学东亚政治系副教授、国际人道协会中国问题专家，1987年第一次从中国来到美国，在锡拉库扎大学学习。用他的话来说，他几乎立即感受到了“文化震撼”。我和他讨论了几个令他大开眼界的现象，在我看来，这代表了一个人所经历的一个非凡的旅程。
Peter Li：我在校园里看到松鼠在嬉戏，我的眼睛睁得大大的，因为我以前在中国从没见过松鼠。小动物不害怕人类，这是多么伟大的地方啊。后来有一次我参加学校的出游，到锡拉库扎郊外一个果园去体验普通美国家庭的生活。我们的一项任务是摘苹果。开始以前，果园主人告诉我们在每棵树上留下五、六个苹果。我问道：“为什么把这些苹果浪费掉呢？”他平静地回答：“不，它们不会被浪费的。接下来的几个月将有降雪，我希望鸟在冬天也能找到食物。”我无言以对，内心从未有过这样的触动感。他的话，让我在中国教育体系中被灌输的资本主义自私的本质，彻底土崩瓦解了。他让我认识到，牺牲自己的一点点生活，可以让不幸的人或者小动物有生存下去的机会。
Michael Tobias：很多经济学家相信，中国越来越重视要加快脚步降低污染，提升能源使用效率和农业产量。毫无疑问，中国的GDP和人均收入在过去三十年里的上升令人瞩目。芝加哥大学出版社即将发型的新书《不再忽视自然：自然保护故事集》里有你负责编写的一个章节，题目是“中国的野生动物危机：文化传统还是政治的发展？”。你认为原因到底是哪一个，危机有多严重？
Peter Li：中国在环境保护问题上面临多种挑战，很多中国专业人士关注并出发表相关问题的文章。中国的动物福利和动物保护危机问题，在西方基本没有人涉足。为了深入调查中国的环境问题，我在过去15年里主要研究这个国家的饲养动物和野生动物保护所面临的挑战。
Li博士在观察对熊实施外科手术的正确做法。
我到中国做过实地考察，我参观了20个养殖场、两个老虎饲养区、两个熊饲养区和亚洲动物基金会在四川成都经营的一个野生熊类动物保护区。作为国际人道协会的中国政策咨询师，我每天都和中国的动物保护组织保持联系。
Michael Tobias：能给我详细讲讲吗？
Peter Li：中国是世界上最大的动物饲养国，中国大陆的工业化农场中有数十亿的圈养动物。当我在2005年到2006年调查中国的工业农场时，整个国家对西方饲养技术表现出异乎寻常的热情，比如妊娠箱、电笼、耳夹、修喙、早期断奶（牛犊）、阉割、断尾（猪）和填食（鸭和鹅，目的是增重和获取鹅肝）。尽管欧盟国家已经逐渐淘汰了这些方法，但中国还在大规模使用。中国庞大的圈养动物存栏数量，说明世界上大部分圈养动物依然生活在没有福利的农场环境中。
中国多层养鸡场内景。
从远到内蒙古的北方到与香港交界的南方城市的长途运输中，动物在长时间的痛苦旅程中饱受折磨。无痛屠宰在中国还是一个新名词，全国各地的屠宰场都没有这样的要求。
Michael Tobias：有很多引人关注的新闻提到熊在中国被虐待，你的调查有什么发现？
熊会在这样的笼子中生活20年。
Peter Li：熊类的饲养毫无疑问是中国最残忍的行为。中国目前有1万头亚洲黑熊——国家保护物种——一生都被关在笼子里，被人在胃部直接切开伤口，从胆囊中提取胆汁。这种野蛮的手术通常会给熊的内脏造成无法恢复的创伤。科学家已经确认，熊类动物如果被饲养，必然会出现生理和心理的创伤。我在两家熊类饲养场的参观，亲眼见到了这种残忍的行为。在东北部省份哈尔滨的中国最大一家熊类饲养机构中，我看到的是人类对非人类物种实施的非人类暴行。只要熊类饲养不被宣布为非法，中国就不能进入现代社会。
中国云南一只奄奄一息的熊。
Michael Tobias：我听说，中国是世界上最大的“皮毛动物饲养”国之一？
Peter Li：是最大，不是之一。2005年，国际动物保护组织揭露了令人震惊的皮毛动物饲养和屠宰行为。中国动物保护组织最近发给我一个视频，一只活狸被剥皮后心脏还在跳动。尽管中国政府试图标准化屠宰程序，但小饲养场依然使用木棍把动物打死。无论在国外游客还是中国年轻人看来，狗肉的话题越来越有争议。2011年，中国的动物保护人士在高速公路共5次拯救了2000条即将被屠宰食用的狗。
Li博士在第四届中国养犬研讨会上。
Michael Tobias：很明显，在2008年夏季奥运会筹备过程中，中国对屠宰狗的问题表现得比较开明。
Peter Li：Michael，杀狗在中国一直是一种极为令人不悦的场景，经常是在马路边的开阔地，在孩子和其它狗的围观下进行宰杀。中国的活动人士一直在呼吁结束这种毫无人性、野蛮的行为和饮食习惯。
Michael Tobias：中国动物园里的情况如何？
Peter Li：北京动物园、上海动物园和南昌动物园在努力改善他们的管理水平和动物生活条件，但是中国大部分动物园还是会让人感觉到，他们对动物的需求、对游客感情的麻木不仁。老旧的兽舍和混乱的管理导致了一些令人震惊的残忍行为，比如活物投喂、动物表演、摆拍等等。
桂林有中国最大的老虎饲养基地，战战兢兢的老虎和严厉的训练员。
Michael Tobias：中国那些伟大的美学传统、诗歌、山水画、佛教和道教伦理，似乎与这个国家20世纪的兽权和生物多样性记录格格不入。
Peter Li：中国的确有关爱动物的文化传统。道教呼吁人们爱惜地球上的一切生物，中国很多帝王都信奉佛教，主张素食、放生，以及在哀悼和庆典期间不杀生。
Michael Tobias：那后来呢？
Peter Li：中国的改革政策或许可以更好地解释这个国家动物福利的危机问题。从1978年开始，中国开始向富强繁荣全力前进，就像你所看到的，5亿多中国人脱离了贫困。但是，在50多岁的中国人头脑中，依然萦绕者对饥饿的恐惧。对中国共产党领导人来说，这种恐惧或许会威胁到政权的稳定性。
Michael Tobias：有意思。
Pete Li：中国改革的设计师邓小平曾经说，粮食问题不解决，人们就会造反。所以，中国改革的初衷是为9亿中国人民解决粮食供应问题，伦理、道德、社会责任、环境影响、人权等等，纷纷被抛在脑后。
Michael Tobias：中国的动物虐待其实促进了经济发展，对吗？我是说，比如熊和猪。
Peter Li：是的。比如说饲养熊类，有人说这个行业在中国的每年产值超过100亿元人民币（大约16亿美元）。东北部省份黑龙江省牡丹江市的一个黑熊饲养场，是当地的纳税大户之一。这些收入在中国都被认为是政治稳定的象征。
Michael Tobias：目前，中国的一些团体在呼吁尽快停止独生子女政策，这或许会让这个国家的消费者数量迅速达到20亿。即时在目前13.4亿人口规模下——有史以来最高人口数量，考虑到你描述的经济背景，动物保护似乎还是个遥不可及的话题。
Peter Li：中国当局没有解决虐待动物问题的动力，因为担心经济发展会被其拖累。而且，这可能会影响到政权的稳定性。你提到了猪，猪肉对中国消费者的重要程度，就相当于汽油对美国人的重要性。中国政府专门设立了“战略猪肉储备”来应对市场上猪肉供应量的波动。这也从另外一个角度解释了，中国为什么没有动物福利法律和反虐待动物法。
Michael Tobias：一条都没有吗？
Peter Li：在动物保护立法方面，中国至少落后工业化国家180年。
Michael Tobias：在你的作品中，你提到了所谓的“国家对大自然开战：1949年到1978年”。你描述了1958年，“‘伟大的领袖’毛号召整个国家开展疯狂的扑杀麻雀活动，把反自然运动推向了高潮。数十亿只麻雀被火枪、弹弓、竹竿、毒药和人为使其疲劳等方法残忍捕杀，载有死麻雀的大卡车在北京天安门广场行走。”之后，1959年开始的三年大饥荒中，中国开始“对野生动物最猛烈的一次进攻”。三十年之后，据我所知，中国终于在1988年通过了“野生动物保护法”——这个国家有史以来第一部相关的法律。
Peter Li：是的，这部法律的两个目的是保护野生动物，和合理使用野生动物。
Michael Tobias：合理？
Peter Li：野生动物保护法最大的缺陷是，它把野生动物定义为可以被人类所使用的“自然资源”。然而，地方政府和企业都把野生动物保护法当作剥削野生动物、为其野蛮行为开脱的挡箭牌。
Michael Tobias：比如说？
Peter Li：熊类饲养，是地方政府在其管辖范围内极力保护的残忍行为的最好例证。多年来，我们听到中国中央政府官员表示过，对熊类饲养和其它剥削野生动物行为的关注，但我们从未听到地方政府发出过类似的声音。对地方政府来说，关闭熊类饲养机构或许会引发辐射效应，其它一些在环境、道德或社会层面上遭受质疑的产业，或许也会被关闭。经济和GDP的增长是地方领导绩效的直接指标，也是北京上层政治机构的评判标准。在改革时代，地方官员的仕途前景与地方经济增长、就业和收入紧密联系。因此，与虐待动物相关的产业其实是政治改革和中国共产党干部提拔制度下的产物。
Michael Tobias：那么，在中国地方政府级别，糟糕的政治必然会导致虐待动物的现象了？
Peter Li：地方保护主义通过很多方式表现出来。除了像优惠占地、减税、快速审批等直接的激励措施以外，地方政府还提供了“无障碍式”生产环境——企业不需要遵守任何环境标准和用人法规。尤其是那些纳税大户，无数荣誉被加之于身，有些企业家被“选为”当地或省一级的人民代表。在中国，让企业家从政是支持地方经济的最好方法。
Michael Tobias：那么，那些所谓“成功”的皮毛动物饲养企业家，都是当地的英雄了？
Peter Li：皮毛动物饲养企业在农村地区，可以直接或者间接创造当地50％的就业岗位，是地方政府毫无争议的纳税大户。所以地方政府很难不支持当地的这种产业。
北京郊区，待屠宰的狗。
Michael Tobias：你在书中写道：“在中国五千年的历史中，从未像现在这样囚禁了成千上万的野生动物。”你继续发问，我个人认为这是非常勇敢的一个问题：“中国人的文化传统难道就是对动物的痛苦漠不关心吗？”
Peter Li：在我看来，很多中国大陆人（我这么说，是为了把台湾和香港人排除在外）对动物的痛苦就是漠不关心、冷酷无情（当然程度不一）。但是我还要严肃地说一句，我认为责任不在他们身上，当然也不是中国传统文化的原因。人们之所以变得冷漠无情，或许是因为社会让他们发生了转变。尤其是在毛时代，同情被压迫者、豢养宠物、打扮化妆，甚至展示个人的时尚品味，都被认为是资产阶级和造反意识而遭到批判。
Michael Tobias：目前中国的消费模式是什么样的？
Peter Li：据BBC的一份报告，今天中国人消费的肉制品是美国的一倍。这并不奇怪，中国在1990年就超过美国，成为世界最大的肉类生产国，而且中国政府长期以来把工业化的西方当成肉类生产的榜样。西方人见面的问候语是“你好吗”，中国人在传统上的问候语是“吃了吗”？
Michael Tobias：有意思。
Peter Li：我想，西方人重视的是人们的感受，而中国人最重视的人温饱。毕业30年后，我遇到了以前的老同学，我差不多要比他们的体重轻30磅。他们怀疑我在美国能不能吃饱饭。今天，人们喜欢在饭桌上“问候”朋友，奢侈的宴席通常有24道菜，大部分是肉类和“山珍海味”。
北京机场的一幅广告，姚明对鲨鱼翅汤说不。
Michael Tobias：你在新书中另外还提到，中国“快速的工业化进程”和其它越来越多的干预自然的行为，“威胁到全国各地398种脊椎动物的生存”。这颇让人感到害怕，同时给传统意义上的中药带来了一些问题，因为中国的生物多样性遭到了严重的破坏。很多生物都处于灭绝的边缘，比如华南虎、江豚、扬子鳄、藏羚羊等等。你引用了中国林业局2004年的报告，其中提到大量已知物种在中国灭绝。
Peter Li：一些思想进步、目光长远的中药剂师已经决定不再使用野生动物器官作为原料。实际上，饲养动物的器官虽然也被支持饲养产业的人士吹嘘为天然原料，但科学家已经证明，从被饲养的熊类身体中提取的胆汁，通常已经被农药残留物、血液、脓、细菌和癌细胞所污染。用死虎骨头制成的虎骨酒的疗效难以令人信服。例如，虎骨酒所号称的对风湿病的疗效，完全可以被其它药物所替代。所有这些必不可少、甚至起死回生的灵丹妙药声称可以治疗眼疾、癌症、昏迷、非典，甚至可以替代肝移植。实际上人们应当认真想想，这真的不是野生动物饲养企业为了在绝望的病人身上赚钱，所耍的把戏吗？今天在化妆品、牙膏和滋补产品中使用熊胆的做法，都与政府的相关政策所抵触，政策的目的就是为了限制熊胆在处方药中的使用。消费野生动物的行为在中国南方最为猖獗，野生动物在那里被认为具有强身健体、祛除疾病，甚至提升男性魅力的作用。但在以前，野生动物算不上是被人羡慕的食物，仅仅是经济落后地区无奈的选择。中国南方对野生动物毫无节制的消费，中国历史上从未出现过。
Michael Tobias：那么在世界上人口最多的国家里，动物保护的前景如何？
Peter Li：虐待动物的规模（世界上数量最多的饲养群体）和程度在中国是前所未见的，我绝对相信，中国在善待动物的全球排名必然是垫底的。为什么？看看以下事实：中国大陆没有一部全面的动物保护法；虐待动物不需要受到惩罚；中国有世界上最大规模的工业化饲养产业；中国的发展模式优先保证物质生产效率的提升；中国的亲商政策让政策制定者和商业群体听不到社会上呼吁保护动物的声音。整个政策环境反对动物保护活动，在可预见的未来不会发生变化。
Michael Tobias：对于一些效仿西方发展模式的国家，肯定会看到一些惨痛的教训。
Peter Li：没错。加拿大扑杀海豹；日本和丹麦屠杀海豚；美国的牛仔竞技秀、西班牙的斗牛、英国猎杀狐狸、巴基斯坦的熊饵。
中国拒绝牛仔竞技秀。
Michael Tobias：然而，我在谈话中感觉到你还是有一些乐观情绪的，对吗？
Peter Li：中国在很多方面的发展出乎人们的意料。大多数年轻一代人拒绝吃狗肉，很多都是家里的独生子女。他们没有经历过困难时期，对痛苦更加敏感。他们需要关怀和爱护，很自然，他们也会把这些感情寄托在动物身上。很多年轻人都对弱势群体表现出深深的同情和关爱。那些在中国高速公路上截停运狗卡车的人，就是中国的年轻活动人士，也是中国迅速发展的动物保护组织成员。还有，Michael，中国所有犬类数量大约是1.3亿，其中大部分是宠物。所以，中国的动物保护群体在不断壮大。一些活动人士估计，中国关爱动物的人数大约有3000万到5000万人，比加拿大的人口总数还要多。
北京一处政府建立的猫舍。
中国的动物保护人士是这个国家最活跃的群体，他们的成绩斐然。2010年，他们成功阻止西班牙斗牛项目进入中国；2011年，他们成功阻止美国牛仔竞技秀进入中国。从2010年开始，中国的活动人士一直在抗议加拿大向中国进口海豹肉。最近，有越来越多人文和社会学科出身的官员进入决策层。可以期望，这些人会从更宏观的角度审视中国的发展。Michael，中国是世界经济环境中不可缺少的角色，也是全球第三大游客发源地。一个仁慈的中国仅仅是时间的问题。我对不远的未来中国的动物保护事业充满希望。
Michael Tobias：谢谢你，李博士。
小男孩和他的小狗。
原文：
Peter J. Li, Ph.D., an Associate Professor of East Asian Politics at the University of Houston-Downtown and China Policy Specialist of Humane Society International, first came to the U.S. from China to study at Syracuse University in 1987. Almost immediately, he had several “cultural shocks,” as he puts it. I asked him about two epiphanies, in particular, which – to my way of thinking – are truly emblematic of one man’s remarkable journey.
Peter Li: On campus I saw squirrels jumping around and chasing each other. My eyes were wide open, since I had never seen squirrels in my life in China. What a great place where small animals were not afraid of people. Then I went on a school outing to an orchard in the suburbs of Syracuse to experience the life of an ordinary American family. One of the hands-on assignments of this activity was to help pick apples. Before we started, the owner of the orchard told us to leave five or six apples on each tree. “Why do you want to waste them,” I raised my hand and asked. His reply touched the deepest part of my heart. “No, they will not be wasted,” he answered calmly. “We will get a lot of snow in the next few months, and I want to make sure that birds have food for the winter.” I was speechless. Never before in my life had I ever been so touched. What he said caused the collapse of my belief in the selfish nature of capitalists indoctrinated by China’s school system. What he said taught me that a small sacrifice on our part can mean hope of survival for a disadvantaged person or nonhuman individual.
Michael Tobias: Many economists have examined China with an emphasis on the country’s rapid efforts to reduce its blistering air pollution, increase energy efficiency and agricultural harvests. And there is no question that China’s GDP, and tens-of-millions of per capita incomes, have risen spectacularly during the past three decades. Your chapter for the forthcoming University of Chicago Press book, Ignoring Nature No More – The Case for Compassionate Conservation, (Edited by Marc Bekoff, for a release in March, 2013) is entitled “Explaining China’s Wildlife Crisis: Cultural Tradition or Politics of Development.” Which is it – tradition or developmental politics – and how bad is the crisis?
Peter Li: China is a comprehensive challenge in environmental protection. Many China experts have researched and written about this subject. The question of China’s animal welfare and animal protection crisis has been largely ignored in China studies in the West. To join the scholarly investigation of China’s environmental issues, I have, in the last 15 years, focused my attention primarily on the country’s animal protection and wildlife conservation challenges.
Dr. Li observing corrective surgery on a rescued farm bear
I have taken many field trips to China, where I visited some 20 factory farms, two tiger farms, two bear farms, and a bear rescue center in Chengdu of Sichuan operated by Animals Asia Foundation. Working as a China Policy Consultant for Humane Society International, I maintain daily contact with the animal protection community in China.
Michael Tobias: And what can you tell me?
Peter Li: China is the world’s biggest animal farming nation. Billions of farm animals are raised on the industrialized farms on the Chinese mainland. When I conducted a survey of China’s factory farms in 2005-2006, I saw a nationwide enthusiasm for Western farming practices such as gestation crates, battery cages, ear-clipping, beak-trimming, early weaning (for calves), castration, tail-docking (for pigs), and forced feeding (ducks and geese for weight gains and foie-gras production). While EU nations are phasing out such practices, China is massively employing them. The sheer number of farm animals in China suggests the world’s greatest number of farm animals are raised in welfare compromised farming conditions in China.
Inside a Chinese layer house
Long-distance transport of farm animals from as far north as Inner Mongolia to as far south as the border city near Hong Kong suggests enormous suffering of livestock on that long and dreadful journey. Humane slaughter is a new concept in China. It is yet to become a requirement for the nation’s massive slaughter facilities across the country.
Michael Tobias: There has been considerable news about the maltreatment of bears in China. What has your research revealed?
Bears can live in these cages for up to 20 years
Peter Li: Bear farming is arguably China’s most brutal operation. In China today, some 10,000 Asiatic black bears, China’s state-protected species, are caged for life for extracting bile from their gallbladders through an open wound cut in their stomachs. This brutal surgery procedure often causes irreparable damage to their internal organs. Scientists have confirmed the many physical and mental traumas of bear farming. My own visit to two bear farms added additional evidence to the cruelty of this farming operation. When I was visiting China’s biggest bear farm in Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, what I witnessed was humanity’s gross inhumanity to an intelligent nonhuman species. China will not be a part of the modern world if bear farming is not outlawed.
A dying farm bear of Yunnan, China
Michael Tobias: As I understand it, China is one of the largest “fur farming” nations?
Peter Li: It is the largest. In 2005, international animal protection groups exposed the shocking farming and slaughter practices on the fur animals. A recent video a Chinese animal protection group sent me showed the heart still beating in a raccoon dog skinned alive. While the Chinese government is trying to standardize slaughtering procedures, small farmers continue to use wooden sticks to beat the animals to death. But the eating of dogs is increasingly controversial, both among foreign visitors, but also among Chinese youth, some of whom, in 2011, made five rescues along highways where a total of 2,000 dogs had been bound for slaughterhouses.
Dr. Li at the 4th China Dog Protection Symposium
Michael Tobias: Apparently, in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, the Chinese were quite open about the slaughter of dogs.
Peter Li: Michael, dog slaughter has long been a hugely offensive scene in China. It is often conducted on the side of the streets in broad view of young children and often conducted in front of other live dogs. Chinese activists continue to call for an end to its inhumanity and this totally uncivilized eating habit.
Michael Tobias: What about practices in Chinese zoos?
Peter Li: The Beijing Zoo, Shanghai Zoo, and Nanchang Zoo are improving their management and animal care conditions, but most Chinese zoos are a sad reminder of humans’ insensitivity to the needs of nonhuman animals and to the feelings of the zoo visitors. Outdated housing and poor management explains some of the most shocking animal cruelty practices such as live feeding, animal performance, photo-ops, and other practices.
Terrified tigers and harsh trainer in China's biggest tiger farm in Guilin
Michael Tobias: China’s remarkably beautiful artistic traditions, poetry, landscape painting (shan-shui), Buddhist and Daoist ethical views all seem to utterly contradict the country’s 20th century animal rights and biodiversity track record?
Peter Li: China does have a cultural legacy of compassion for nonhuman animals. Daoism calls for compassion for all other creatures on earth. Many of China’s Emperors were Buddhist believers who called upon the people to practice vegetarianism, the liberation of animals, and suspension of slaughter in times of mourning or celebration.
Michael Tobias: So what has happened?
Peter Li: China’s politics of reform offer us a better explanation for the nation’s animal welfare crisis. Since 1978, China has seen a nation-wide drive for prosperity and, as you know, more than 500 million Chinese have been lifted out of poverty. But there remains a collective fear of hunger in the minds of people over the age of 50 in China. And, this fear has a regime stability connotation to the Chinese Communist leaders.
Michael Tobias: Interesting.
Pete Li: Deng Xiaoping, China’s reform architect, once remarked that people would revolt if the food security situation could not be improved. So Chinese reforms, initially, were intended to improve the food supply to the 900 million Chinese people, while ethics, morality, social responsibility, environmental impact, labor rights, etc., were often ignored.
Michael Tobias: And China’s animal abuse concentrates on economic development? I’m thinking, for example, of bears, and pigs.
Peter Li: Yes. In the case of bear farming, one is speaking of an industry across China that generates annually more than 10 billion yuan (approximately $US 1.6 billion). A bear farm in Mudanjiang in Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province is one of the biggest taxpayers of the city. Such income is translated in China as political stability.
Michael Tobias: Now a Chinese think tank is calling for the rapid phasing out of the country’s one-child policy, which would easily drive the nation’s population to two billion consumers. Even at China’s current population of over 1.34 billion people – the largest human population in history – the animal protection challenge, given this economic context you describe, seems daunting.
Peter Li: Chinese authorities are not motivated to tackle the problem of animal cruelty for fear that economic growth would be slowed down. Again, that could be interpreted as leading to a regime stability crisis. You referenced pigs. Since meat consumption is so important to the Chinese consumers, like gasoline for Americans, the Chinese government established a “strategic pork reserve” to counter possible vicissitudes in pork supplies on the market.
This also explains why China does not have animal welfare laws or anti-cruelty laws.
Michael Tobias: None?
Peter Li: China has lagged behind the industrialized nations in animal protection law-making for more than 180 years.
Michael Tobias: In your work, you point out what you call “The State’s War against Nature: 1949-1978.” You describe how, in 1958, “this hostility reached a climax in that Mao, the ‘great leader,’ called on the entire nation to engage in a frenzied sparrow killing campaign sending billions of the birds to their brutal death by gunshots, slingshots, bamboo poles, poisons, or out of sheer exhaustion. Truckloads of dead sparrows were paraded on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.” And then, how during a three-year famine that started in 1959, Chinese policies unleashed “one of the most intense assaults [ever] on wildlife.”
Thirty years later, China, as I understand it, finally adopted a “Wildlife Protection Law” in 1988, the first such law in the nation’s history.
Peter Li: Yes, with two objectives in mind: the conservation of wildlife, and the reasonable use of wildlife animals.
Michael Tobias: Reasonable?
Peter Li: The biggest flaw of the Wildlife Protection Law (WPL) is its positioning of wildlife animals as ‘natural resources’ to be used for human benefits. Local authorities and businesses have, however, chosen to use the WPL as their bible to justify their business operations of wildlife exploitation.
Michael Tobias: Such as?
Peter Li: Bear farming is the best example of local authorities jealously protecting the cruel farming operation in regions under their jurisdiction. Over the years, we have heard China’s central government officials expressing concerns over bear farming and other wildlife exploitation operations. We have not heard local officials voicing the same kind of concerns. To local officials, closing bear farms could trigger a ripple effect leading to demands for closing other businesses found to be environmentally, ethically, or socially questionable.
Local growth and local GDP growth rate are direct indicators of leadership or performance qualifications, as judged by those higher up in the political hierarchy in Beijing. Upward career mobility in the reform era for local officials has been closely tied to their ability to generate local growth, create employment and generate revenue. Therefore, local support for animal abuse related industries and production has a lot to do with the reform politics and the Chinese Communist Party Center’s cadre evaluation policy.
Michael Tobias: So across China, at the local level, it’s a political quagmire guaranteed to perpetuate animal suffering?
Peter Li: Local protectionism is manifested in many different ways. In addition to direct incentives such as preferential land use right, tax breaks, less red tape, local authorities also provide a production environment that is “obstacle-free.” Businesses are not expected to meet any environmental standards or labor standards. Local businessmen, particularly those businesses that are big local taxpayers, are showered with all kinds of honors. Some of them are “elected” deputies to local and provincial people’s congresses. In China, there is no other better way to show support to local businesses than to make them government officials.
Michael Tobias: So a fur farmer, for example, who is, so to speak, “successful” is a local hero.
Peter Li: Well, consider the fact that fur farming can employ directly or indirectly up to 50% of the labor in a farming community, thus making it an indispensable tax contributor to a local government. Local authorities find it hard not to support this production in their localities.
Dogs to be killed for food in a Beijing suburb
Michael Tobias: You’ve stated that “Never in its 5,000-year history did China ever raise and keep hundreds of millions of wildlife species in captivity as it is today.” And you went on to ask, which I find pretty courageous on your part, “Are the Chinese culturally predestined to be indifferent to animal suffering?”
Peter Li: Many Chinese mainlanders (I am using this word to distinguish Chinese on the mainland from those in Taiwan and Hong Kong) are, in my opinion, possibly indifferent or insensitive to animal suffering (to varying degrees). But let me also state for the record that, again in my opinion, they themselves are not to blame. Neither is Chinese traditional culture to blame. People become indifferent or insensitive perhaps because they have been socialized to be so, particularly under Mao, when sympathy for the downtrodden, love of pets, wearing make-up, and displaying individual taste in fashion were all condemned as bourgeois and rebellious.
Michael Tobias: What about current consumption patterns in China?
Peter Li: Today, Chinese consumers, according to a recent BBC report, eat twice as much meat as those in the United States. This is not surprising. China surpassed the US as the world’s biggest meat producer in 1990, and the Chinese authorities have long looked to the industrialized West as the object of emulation in meat production. While Westerners greet each other by asking “how are you,” Chinese people traditionally greeted each other by saying ‘Have you eaten?’”
Michael Tobias: That’s very interesting.
Peter Li: I guess how people feel is more important to Westerners, while if people are hungry or not was more important to the Chinese. When I met some of my old classmates back in China 30 years after graduation, I was some 40 pounds lighter than they were. They actually wondered if I got enough to eat in the US.
Today, people “greet” friends and relatives at a dinner table that may involve lavish banquets of 24 courses of mostly meats and “delicacies from the mountains and seas.”
Yao Ming says NO to Shark Fin soup in an ad at the Beijing airport
Michael Tobias: Which is pretty terrifying when one considers, as you have elsewhere pointed out in your chapter for the forthcoming Marc Bekoff book, that China’s “rapid industrialization” and other increasing human intrusions “have threatened the survival of 398 species of vertebrates” across China. This raises issues, of course, with regard to what is generally thought of as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), in terms of the exploitation of Chinese biodiversity – with so many species on the brink of extinction, like South China tigers, the Chinese river dolphin, the Chinese alligator and Mongolian gazelle among many others. You’ve cited a 2004 China State Forestry Bureau release that indicated numerous known extinct species in China.
Peter Li: Progressive and forward-looking TCM doctors have vowed not to use wildlife animal products as ingredients. Indeed, farmed wildlife parts, allegedly claimed as natural ingredients by supporters of the bear farming industry, are not natural products at all. Scientists have confirmed that bile collected from bear farms is often contaminated with drug residues, blood, pus, germs, and cancerous cells.
Tiger bone wine made from dead tiger bones has, at best, a dubious curative effect. The claimed healing power of tiger bone wine for rheumatism, to take but one example, can be replaced by other medicines.
In fact, one has to ask whether all these allegedly indispensable and life-saving ingredients for illnesses ranging from eye irritations to cancers, coma, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and even liver transplants are really nothing more than the wildlife farming industry capitalizing on the anxiety of patients.
Today, bear bile, for example, has been used in cosmetics, toothpaste, and tonic products for profits contravening government policies that are aimed at limiting its use in a selected number of prescriptions. Consumption of wildlife is most rampant in South China, where it has been promoted as body-building, disease-preventing, and manhood enhancing. But in the past, the consumption of wildlife was never deemed an honorable food choice, and was limited to communities that were economically backward. Today’s runaway consumption of wildlife in South China has no precedent in China’s past.
Michael Tobias: So what does the future look like for animal protection in the world’s most populous nation?
Peter Li: Animal suffering is unprecedented in China in magnitude in both numerical terms (having the largest number of nonhuman animals in farming units) and in welfare conditions. With regard to China’s ranking on a global report card, so to speak, I would not hesitate to say that it may be at the bottom, if not the very bottom. Why do I say so? Look at the facts: Mainland China does not have a comprehensive animal protection law. Animal cruelty is not a punishable offense. China has the world’s largest number of animals in the industrialized farms. China’s continuing development model gives priority to productivity increase defined in terms of material gains. China’s pro-business politics has made societal voices for animal protection a nuisance to policy-makers and the business communities alike. The overall political environment is against activism for animal protection, certainly in the foreseeable future.
Michael Tobias: And for a nation that looks to the West for any kind of development templates, there are plenty of lamentable missteps.
Peter Li: That’s exactly right. Canadian seal slaughter, dolphin massacres in Japan and Denmark, rodeos in the U.S., bullfighting in Spain, fox hunting in the U.K., bear baiting in Pakistan.
Chinese say NO to rodeo show in Beijing
Michael Tobias: And yet, I’ve detected in our discussions a certain optimism on your part?
Peter Li: China is changing beyond recognition in many areas. Dog eating is rejected by the majority of the younger generation, many of whom are the single child of their parents. They have no recollection of hardship days and are enormously more sensitive to suffering. They demand and get care and love. To them, it is natural for the same kind of emotional care to be given to others including nonhuman animals. Many of these youngsters display great sympathy and compassion for the disadvantaged. Those who stopped the trucks of dogs on China’s highways were all young Chinese activists; members of China’s burgeoning animal protection movement.
Also keep in mind, Michael, China today has an estimated 130 million dogs, many of whom are household pets. As a result, China’s animal protection community is expanding. Some Chinese activists estimated that as many as 30 to 50 million Chinese are animal lovers, bigger than the total population of Canada.
Inside a government cat shelter in Beijing
Chinese animal protectionists are one of the most active interest groups in China. They have also been very successful. In 2010, they succeeded in stopping a proposed Spanish bullfighting introduction project. In 2011, they succeeded in stopping the introduction of American rodeos to China. Since 2010, Chinese activists have campaigned against Canada’s attempt to market seal meat in China.
Recently, more officials who graduated from humanities and social sciences are entering politics. It is expected that these officials will have a more complex vision of China’s development.
Michael, China is an integral part of the global economy and the third largest contributor of tourists. A humane China is only a matter of time. I am optimistic about the animal protection in China in the not too distant future.
Michael Tobias: Thank you, Dr. Li!
Little boy and his puppy
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