Chinese city's one-dog policy
(David P.)
November 19, 2009
Mark MacKinnon, Toronto Globe and Mail
Guangzhou, China -- For decades, China's citizens have lived
with the controversial one-child regime imposed on them by
the government. Now, pet lovers in this southern factory city
are frothing over the latest official intrusion into their
lives: a one-dog policy. The new rule, which limits dog
ownership to one per family, was introduced in July by the
Guangzhou government as part of a campaign to clean up the
city and eradicate rabies before next fall, when the city will
host the 16th Asian Games. Suddenly, going for a walk with a
pair of pooches could get the unregistered one seized and the
owner slapped with a fine of 2,000 yuan (about $300). The law
also aims to encourage dog registration by lowering the fee
from 10,000 yuan to 500.
But just as families go to enormous and creative lengths to
circumvent the one-child rule, the new restriction on dog
ownership has spawned a host of plots by multi-dog families
looking to keep their precious pups on the sly. Dogs were
once much more likely to appear on a menu in Guangzhou than
at the end of a leash in a park. But dog ownership -- condemned
as bourgeois by Mao Zedong -- has skyrocketed in recent decades,
especially among the city's elderly. While some have complied
with the new rules and handed their surplus dogs over to the
Public Security Bureau and an uncertain fate, others have
smuggled their canine companions to the countryside or hidden
them with relatives. Still others have merely moved their dogs
around on paper, registering them as belonging to friends and
neighbors while keeping them right at home and out of sight.
"You can just register them with another family & still have
them at your house," said Yan Junfeng, the 27-year-old owner
of a pet-supplies-and-grooming store. Yan, whose store sells
publications such as Pets Magazine and frilly coats for dogs
in a city where the weather is warm almost year round, says
he has only one dog, but admits he'd go to great lengths to
avoid official detection if he had more. He said his store's
sales of purebred toy poodles have dropped only slightly since
the new law came into force.
"The law is a bad idea. It'll increase the number of strays,"
said Yan's wife, who gave her name as Mercury. "People are
trying every means to keep their dogs." The new law also
prohibits all dogs more than 28 inches in height in the city
center, which has bred fears of a mass roundup of large dogs.
Though that hasn't happened so far, an unnamed police officer
was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency when the new
rules were introduced, suggesting that residents could send
pets to the security bureau to be "disposed" of, and warning
that illegal animals would be seized by the authorities.
A similar one-dog policy was adopted in Beijing several years
ago during the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, and was followed
by mass culls of thousands of unregistered & unvaccinated dogs.
Dog-killing campaigns are regular occurrences in China, where
more than 2,000 people die each year from rabies.
Feng Dongmei, the Guangzhou-based manager of an animal-rights
group called Animals Asia, said the new rules haven't been
strictly enforced to date in Guangzhou. She said her group
has been working with the government to focus on the aim of
increasing dog registration. Because of the high cost, only
800 of an estimated 100,000 pet dogs in the city were
registered before the new rules came into effect July 1.
However, 21,000 owners have reportedly registered their dogs
since then. Many owners are resigned to complying with the
new rules, even if they don't agree with them. "My brother
had seven small dogs and he's giving them all away," said Li
Changjiang, a 60-year-old who was walking along the bank of
the Pearl River one evening, pushing a wheelchair shared by
his elderly mother and her beloved white Pekinese. "He was
very sad at first, but he chose the dog he loved most & kept
that one."
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S.LaRocca
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