The Guardian-China local governments launch crackdown on dogs after child was mauled

A man swims with his dog in a canal in Beijing

Local governments across China have launched a crackdown on dogs after a toddler was mauled by a rottweiler earlier this month.

The child was injured while walking with her mother in Chengdu on 16 October, leading authorities to announce they would tighten control of dogs while reiterating the importance of “civilised dog ownership”.

China state media reported the toddler was transferred out of the ICU on 23 October and her vital signs are stable at the moment. The police have taken criminal coercive measures against the dog’s owner, and the case is being further investigated.

Henan’s Shenqiu County announced it would focus on prohibited dogs, unregistered dogs and strays. On the same day, Sichuan’s Ebian Yi Autonomous County decided to carry out a county-wide crackdown – saying any dog found unattended in a public place would be considered a stray dog for capture.

Social media posts from inside China showed landlords or community committee members breaking into people’s houses and forcibly taking away their dogs. Some of the animals were later killed.

It was reported that a university in Liaoning Province fired a security guard who strangled stray dogs on campus. Chinese local news reported that students killed stray dogs in a dormitory in a vocational college in Sichuan.

According to the 2021 China Pet Industry white paper, the number of stray dogs is 40 million while the number of stray cats is 53 million. In 2019, China ranked fifth in the world in terms of the number of deaths from rabies, based on data released from the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

China does not have any special laws relating to stray dogs at a national or local level.

“Many places in China have introduced local regulations involving stray dogs, but due to the low level of legal effect, insufficient law enforcement, too light penalties, and insufficient supporting facilities, the feasibility of these regulations is poor,” China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation said on their website.

The indiscriminate killing of stray dogs has aroused some public anger.

People in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, took to the streets with signs calling for and end to animal cruelty on 22 October.

“Not all stray dogs are bad dogs, not all people are good people! Please stop killing animals,” Chinese actor Cya Liu Ya-se posted on her Weibo.

“It’s OK to not love them, but please don’t hurt them. I sincerely ask that we all be kind, reasonable, and not abusive!” said another Chinese actor – Di Yang – on his Weibo. Both accounts were banned shortly after the posts.

Internet users also called on the public to go to the State Council website and leave a message asking the government to stop abusing and killing stray animals, to reasonably disclose the way stray cats and dogs are handled, and to call on the state to legislate for the protection of animals.