Another Crackdown in China-1 Dog per Household in Beijing.

Strict Chinese regulations could cost pet owners their best friend
By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY
BEIJING — China already is famous for its one-child policy, which Beijing says has curbed population growth that could stop the nation from growing rich.
Now, in the Year of the Dog, the Chinese capital is enforcing a one-dog policy. The goal: to curb a pet boom among people whose bourgeois lifestyles would horrify Chairman Mao, the Communist leader who banned pets for decades.

Waving banners and screaming, "Stop the slaughter!" more than 200 young Chinese, fearful that their animals will be killed, gathered in Beijing on Saturday.


Protesters stage a rally Saturday against the new "one-dog policy" in Beijing.
Only one pet dog is allowed per household in nine zones, and anyone
keeping an unlicensed dog will face prosecution.

The noisy but peaceful demonstration also attracted at least 200 police officers, some in riot gear. The police detained and later released at least 15 people.

Regulations issued last week limit each Beijing household to one dog, prohibit owners from taking them to parks or other public areas and reinforce the ban on large dogs — any animal with a shoulder height above 14 inches.

The official reasons are public safety and disease control: Rabies fatalities leapt 30% in the first nine months of 2006. Rabies became the nation's top infectious- disease killer, ahead of tuberculosis and AIDS, according to the Ministry of Health. "Anyone breaking the rules will be punished," the Nov. 6 order warns.

For the owners of the 550,000 dogs registered with the city and the more than 450,000 the Beijing Association for Small Animal Protection says are unregistered, the fear of prosecution pales beside their pets' likely fate: detention or even execution, right before their eyes.

"The police started house-to-house searches this month," said Zhang Li, 24, who was at the protest Saturday outside the Beijing Zoo. Her husky exceeds the height rule. "I'm so worried, I can't work or live normally. The police could kill him on the spot."

Protests are rare in China's tightly policed capital. One reason is that urbanites have profited the most from the nation's free-market revolution. Now, these young professionals want to protect their newly won affluence, lifestyles and rights. "Dogs are humanity's friends. These regulations are infringing our human rights," Zhang said.

The public dissent this weekend is only the campaign's opening salvo, protesters said. They spread word about the demonstration through the Internet, even though the government blocked some pet websites in recent days in response to their opposition to the rules. "There will be more protests like this," promised Xu Chun, 25, a software programmer.

Xu will walk Silly, his Old English sheepdog, only after 10 p.m. to avoid the police and informers, who receive cash rewards from police hotlines if they turn in a big or unlicensed dog. "We want the leaders to know we are not happy and that they must revise these unreasonable rules," he said. "Many larger dogs are not dangerous at all."

Happy, a 9-year-old Pekingese lap dog, is neither big nor dangerous.

"He went blind four years ago, but I can't bear to put him down," said Zuo Cheng, 54.

Zuo fell in love with dogs when she was sent from Beijing to labor in the countryside during Mao's Cultural Revolution. "I had a 'pig dog,' a sheepdog that helped me look after the pigs," she recalled.

When dog ownership rebounded in the 1990s, Zuo bought Happy and kept her a secret at first. This year, Zuo took in three strays. What will happen to Happy's friends, given the new one-dog rule?

"Perhaps the police will give them to other people," Zuo said hopefully.

"Nonsense," replied her husband, Li Xiaobing, 53. "They will be destroyed."

I wish oes.org could help somehow. Any ideas?

The US is a good example of government control with no reguards to what the majority wants. Happening right before our eyes. What's being done? Not much.

.......Maybe on some issues that don't rise to the level of "something important enough to do something about", but how can you say that after the recent elections? The majority (rightly or wrongly) has been clamoring for a change in direction that the leadership hadn't been listening to, so the public threw them out. So I must disagree strongly with your blanket statement.

BEIJING - Elaine Loke is shutting down her dog boutique and will spirit her golden retrievers Hippy and Bally out of Beijing to escape the city's sweeping anti-rabies campaign.

Dog owners like Loke have been scrambling to hide their pets in the face of a new crackdown which allows only one dog per household and bans breeds taller than 14 inches. Fears have been fueled by graphic Internet pictures and witnesses who say police are beating to death strays and dogs that run afoul of regulations.

"I can't believe this is happening," said Loke, 33, who keeps the curtains in her first-floor apartment drawn to ward off prying neighbors and walks her dogs in an underground parking lot. "It's so stressful. In the morning, I hear dogs barking and people talking outside my home and I think the police are coming."

The pressure is so bad that Loke is returning to her native Hong Kong and closing a business she has had for two years.

In China, dogs have long been seen as a source of meat as much as companionship. But the current crackdown has touched a nerve in the rapidly modernizing capital, especially among its burgeoning middle class.

"What kind of rules are these? I don't expect everybody to love animals. But I do want to have my rights to keep pets," said Clare Xiao, an account manager at an advertising company. She sent her larger Brittany to a kennel run by a friend and kept her Pekinese, a stray she found on the street.

"What the government is doing is just disappointing, cold and emotionless," said Xiao.

Many of the prohibitions have been on the books since 2003, but only sporadically enforced. The city of 13 million people has 1 million dogs, half of them unregistered, according to state media.

A sharp increase in rabies cases nationwide has prompted the renewed vigilance. Only 3 percent of China's dog's are vaccinated against rabies and the disease is nearly always fatal in humans once symptoms develop, though it can be warded off by a series of expensive and painful injections.

Officials have extended the 2003 rules to cover not only Beijing's center but some outlying areas. The clampdown, announced Nov. 6, gave owners until Thursday to comply or the dogs would be seized and the owners fined.

One owner Zhu Qiao has moved three times since 2001 to find areas where her black-and-white dog, Gou Gou, could be raised safely and within the law.

"He's part of my life, he's my friend and family," said Zhu, 30, a television producer. "If you want to impose a law, you have to get the opinion of dog owners and experts. You can't just take them away."

"I can't move again. There's no option but to hide him and if he gets taken, I'll go with him."

Another owner had his Labrador retriever taken away Wednesday because she was too big.

"She is a very amicable dog. She never barked," said the owner, a businessman who would give only his surname Yang. "If they don't allow me to raise her here, I will find another place. I will get her back."

Witness accounts and photos on the Internet have shown dogs being captured in nets and pummeled with wooden and metal sticks. But authorities have vowed to carry out a "strict but civilized" campaign that police hoped would not anger dog owners, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

"I have never heard of dogs being culled after they were caught by police. Dogs are a man's best friend and we treat them as friends, even when we have to lock them up for the sake of public security," Xinhua quoted a Ministry of Public Security official, Bao Suixian, as saying.

Many owners have sent their dogs to kennels outside the city. Some are handing them over to friends and family.

Joyce Wang gave one of her dogs to her sister and is keeping Ding Ding, her fox terrier, close by her side. She said she had heard that the government was offering $25 to people who reported on rule-breaking dog owners.

"I'm scared and worried. Now I don't take him outside during the day," Wang said. "Even in the evening, we will take a detour if we see people in the compound we live in."