Beijing doesn’t like big dogs

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Attitudes towards dogs in China it’s changing and their popularity as pets is soaring, while the areas of the country where their meat is eaten are now fewer and fewer. In Beijing, however, having a pet dog is still complicated, especially in the city center, like he told on the Financial Times the British journalist Yuan Yang, who lives there. Although local authorities describe “love for puppies” as a “traditional cultural trait”, in fact, eight central and one suburban neighborhoods have restrictions, including the prohibition of owning dogs that exceed 35 centimeters in height at the withers, the highest point of the back.

In the period of the Cultural Revolution, the great movement of revolt and internal purge wanted by Mao Zedong between 1966 and 1976 to preserve the communist revolutionary ideology, to have animals such as dogs, cats or fish was considered a bourgeois and capitalist habit, and therefore discouraged. Things did not change much in the following years, when the central government encouraged the development of rich and modern metropolises: in Beijing, in particular, the local administration prohibited for hygienic reasons the raising and keeping of animals considered too dirty, including chickens, rabbits. , sheep and even dogs. Also in the 1980s, dogs were banned from the city center for fear that they could spread epidemics of rabies.

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It was in the 1990s that people in Beijing and other large Chinese cities began to have dogs as pets. New farms and new problems sprouted, such as straying or the increase in complaints and complaints for aggression and annoyance. In 1994, the local government introduced a compulsory license to have a dog: it was very expensive – the equivalent of four years’ salary for a university professor at the time, Yang says – and each family was allowed to have at most one.

By the early 2000s, dog ownership policies in Beijing softened slightly, but some restrictions remained. The cost of the license to have a dog was lowered but in some areas a height limit of 35 centimeters at the withers: according to local newspapers, the local authorities chose a random criterion, justified it with the residents’ presumed fear of large dogs, and argued that in this way they would limit bites and aggressions. Among the prohibited breeds are, for example, Dalmatian, greyhounds, Great Danes, golden retrievers, Akita or Samoyeds. In any case, it’s forbidden take dogs to city parks because according to the authorities they get too dirty and annoy.

This is what a dog license in Beijing looks like. Read how insane the registration process and rules are, which are now being enforced. One dog per address. Only below 35 cm within city center. And pay government 1000 RMB for the pleasure of owning a dog. https://t.co/vKVbDToOND pic.twitter.com/3qzn6gn8e2

– Ananth Krishnan (@ananthkrishnan) June 9, 2019

Yang says that until a few years ago being discovered with a medium or large dog in the city center meant risking the confiscation of the animal and its suppression; in addition, every May the local police undertook to find and confiscate the “illegal” dogs together with the dog catchers. But now, according to breeders and dog experts interviewed by Yang, it is rare for animals that exceed the permitted limits to be seized, just as it is unusual for owners to suffer repercussions, unless they create some problems.

Beijing is not the only city in China where there are these limitations. Similar ones are adopted by Wuhan and Hangzhou, while in Guangzhou, which is located near Hong Kong, dogs taller than 71 centimeters at the withers are prohibited. The situation is better in Shanghai, the richest and most international city in China, where many clubs and shops allow dogs and there are no limits on height; more than twenty breeds considered dangerous are prohibited.

Precisely because Shanghai is well disposed towards dogs, there was a lot of criticism in April when a coronavirus pandemic manager had killed a person’s dog in quarantine during the rigidissimo lockdown imposed to contain the spread of infections.

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