The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series Series editors: Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn Associate editor : Clair Linzey In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of other scholars have followed from historians to social scientists. From being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics and in multidisciplinary inquiry. This series explores the challenges that Animal Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional understandings of human-animal relations. Specifically, the Series will: provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out ethical positions on animals; publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished, scholars, and produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary in character or have multidisciplinary relevance Titles include Elisa Aaltola ANIMAL SUFFERING: PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE Aysha Akhtar ANIMALS AND PUBLIC HEALTH Why Treating Animals Better is Critical to Human Welfare Alasdair Cochrane AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMALS AND POLITICAL THEORY Eleonora Gullone ANIMAL CRUELTY, ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, AND HUMAN AGGRESSION More than a Link Alastair Harden ANIMALS IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD Ethical Perspectives from Greek and Roman Texts Lisa Johnson POWER, KNOWLEDGE, ANIMALS Andrew Knight THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS Randy Malamud AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMALS IN VISUAL CULTURE Ryan Patrick McLaughlin CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND THE STATUS OF ANIMALS The Dominant Tradition and its Alternatives Claire Molloy POPULAR MEDIA AND ANIMALS Siobhan O Sullivan ANIMALS, EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY
Kay Peggs AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMALS AND SOCIOLOGY Thomas Ryan ANIMALS AND SOCIAL WORK A Moral Introduction Thomas Ryan ( editor) ANIMALS IN SOCIAL WORK Why and How They Matter Joan Schaffner AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMALS AND THE LAW Tatjana Višak KILLING HAPPY ANIMALS Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg ( editors) POLITICAL ANIMALS AND ANIMAL POLITICS Forthcoming titles Mark Bernstein HUMAN ANIMAL RELATIONS The Obligation to Care Anna S King ANIMAL THEOLOGY AND ETHICS IN INDIAN RELIGIONS Steve McMullen ANIMALS AND ECONOMICS Sabrina Tonutti ON NOT EATING MEAT The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series Series Standing Order ISBN 978 0 230 57686 5 Hardback 978 0 230 57687 2 Paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Also by Deborah Cao: ANIMALS ARE NOT THINGS ( in Chinese) ANIMAL LAW IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND CHINESE LAW TRANSLATING LAW WHILE THE DOG GENTLY WEEPS (in Chinese) ANIMAL LAW IN AUSTRALIA CODE RED: LAW AND LANGUAGE IN CHINA ( forthcoming)
Animals in China Law and Society Deborah Cao Griffith University, Australia
Deborah Cao 2015 Foreword Peter Singer 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-55354-9 ISBN 978-1-137-40802-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137408020 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cao, Deborah, author. Animals in China : law and society / Deborah Cao, Griffith University, Australia. pages cm (Palgrave Macmillan animal ethics series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Animal welfare Law and legislation China. 2. Captive wild animals Law and legislation China. 3. Wildlife conservation Law and legislation China. I. Title. KNQ3123.C36 2015 344.510499 dc23 2015014613
In loving memory of my father Cao Shanrong (1924 2014) May his memory be a blessing.
Contents Foreword viii Peter Singer Series Editors Preface Preface Acknowledgements x xii xiv 1 When Animals and Humans Meet in the Middle Kingdom: Introduction 1 2 Happy Fish and Royal Workers: Animals in Traditional Philosophy and Law 10 3 Pandamonium: Wildlife Law 27 4 Crouching Tiger Bones, Hidden Elephant Tusks: Wildlife Crimes 65 5 The F-Word of Cats and Dogs, Food or Friends: Companion Animals 100 6 Caged Monkey Kings, Naked Foxes and Screaming Bunnies: Working Animals 123 7 Chinese Animal Lib: An Emerging Social Movement 148 8 Last Words 170 Appendix 1: List of Chinese Laws and Regulations 172 Appendix 2: Texts Quoted in Original Chinese 175 Appendix 3: List of Laboratory Primate Quotas 180 Notes 188 Selected Bibliography 207 Index 213 vii
Foreword When I speak about ethics and animals, I am often asked if I think that we are making progress. In response, I go back to 1975, when Animal Liberation was published. The only animal protection organizations anyone had heard of, like the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, focused on dogs and cats and perhaps horses. They did not discuss factory farming or the use of animals in research. At that time, the suggestion that animals might have rights or that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way humans treat them was often greeted with incomprehension or ridicule. In one television interview I did after the book appeared, the interviewer just could not grasp that I was suggesting that we should stop eating animals. No one even knew what the word vegan meant. Forty years later, all that has changed. There are huge organizations with millions of members working for all animals, and they are having an impact. Across the entire European Union, the worst forms of farm animal confinement have been prohibited. Hundreds of millions of hens, pigs and calves have more room to move, although their living conditions are still far from acceptable. California voters passed similar laws at a referendum in 2008, and those laws come into effect in 2015. Vegetarian and vegan alternatives to meat are available everywhere. There is, therefore, reason to hope that the situation of animals in the West is improving, even if the improvement has been frustratingly slow. Yet at a global level, a very large dark cloud looms over this improvement. While meat consumption in the United States, which roughly doubled in the twentieth century, is now starting to decline, the rise in meat consumption in China hugely outweighs any reduction in the West. More than half the world s pigs are produced in China. Huge factory farms under construction as I write will increase production still further. This will mean miserable, closely confined lives for more than half a billion of these sensitive social animals. In addition, China has seven times as many egg-laying hens as the United States, most of them kept, as in the United States, in small wire cages. For anyone concerned about the suffering of animals, therefore, nothing can be more important than the attempt to improve animal protection in China. Of course, this movement will have to come viii
Foreword ix predominantly from the Chinese people themselves, and they will take their own path, which may not be the same as the path currently being taken in the West. Nevertheless, we in the West may be able to encourage and assist them in some ways. To do that we first need to understand what the situation with regard to animals in China is. Reading Animals in China: Law and Society is an essential step towards that greater under- standing. Deborah Cao covers a wide area, and although her focus is on the law, she also helps us to understand Chinese cultural practices with regard to animals and the philosophical background to them. As she explains, there is a paradox in that on the one hand, ancient Chinese thought does not divide humans and animals as sharply as Judeo-Christian doctrines. There is nothing in Chinese philosophy corresponding to the biblical view that human beings alone are made in the image of God nor that God granted humans dominion to rule over the animals. Buddhist teachings, in particular, urge compassion towards all sentient beings. It is, therefore, somewhat mysterious that Chinese culture is in many respects even less sensitive to the suffering of animals than Western culture. Yet not all the news from China is bad. In her final chapter, Cao describes the nascent animal welfare movement in China. I saw it for myself when I visited China in 2012, speaking at Beijing Normal University and Shandong University, at a bioethics conference in Changsha and at a meeting with a group of vegetarians in Shanghai. Especially at the universities, I was greeted by large and enthusiastic audiences, most of them concerned about animal welfare. Many were vegetarian or vegan and active in seeking to extend the protection of animals. As China continues to develop and solves the immediate problem of providing an adequate standard of living for all its people, I believe it will increasingly turn to extending the principle of compassion to all sentient beings. That is the best hope for the future of animals in China. Peter Singer Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, and Laureate Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Universit y of Melbourne
Series Editors Preface This is a new book series for a new field of inquiry: animal ethics. Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the ethics of our treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of other scholars, from historians to social scientists, has followed. From being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics and in multidisciplinary inquiry. In addition, a rethink of the status of animals has been fuelled by a range of scientific investigations which have revealed the complexity of animal sentiency, cognition and awareness. The ethical implications of this new knowledge have yet to be properly evaluated, but it is becoming clear that the old view that animals are mere things, tools, machines or commodities cannot be sustained ethically. But it is not only philosophy and science that are putting animals on the agenda. Increasingly, in Europe and the United States, animals are becoming a political issue as political parties vie for the green and animal vote. In turn, political scientists are beginning to look again at the history of political thought in relation to animals, and historians are beginning to revisit the political history of animal protection. As animals grow as an issue of importance, so there have been more collaborative academic ventures leading to conference volumes, special journal issues, indeed even new academic animal journals. Moreover, we have witnessed the growth of academic courses, as well as university posts, in animal ethics, animal welfare, animal rights, animal law, animals and philosophy, human-animal studies, critical animal studies, animals and society, animals in literature, animals and religion tangible signs that a new academic discipline is emerging. Animal ethics is the new term for the academic exploration of the moral status of the non-human an exploration that explicitly involves a focus on what we owe animals morally and also helps us to understand the influences social, legal, cultural, religious and political that legitimate animal abuse. This series explores the challenges that animal ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional understandings of human-animal relations. The series is needed for three reasons: (i) because texts that will service the new university courses on animals need to be provided; (ii) because x
Series Editors Preface xi the increasing number of students studying and academics doing research in animal-related fields need support; and (iii) because there is currently no book series that is a focus for multidisciplinary research in the field. Specifically, the series will provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out ethical positions on animals; publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished, scholars; and produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary in character or have multidisciplinary relevance. The new Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics series is the result of a unique partnership between Palgrave Macmillan and the Ferrater Mora Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The centre, an independent think tank for the advancement of progressive thought about animals, is the first of its kind in the world. It aims to demonstrate rigorous intellectual enquiry and the highest standards of scholarship. It strives to be a world-class centre of academic excellence in its field. This series is an integral part of the centre s mission to put animals on the intellectual agenda by facilitating academic research and publication. The series is also a natural complement to one of the centre s other major projects, the Journal of Animal Ethics. We invite academics to visit the centre s website, www.oxfordanimalethics.com, and to contact us with new book proposals for the series. Andrew Linzey and Priscilla N. Cohn General Editors
Preface Humans are a leading cause of distress, pain and suffering for other animals, no matter which country and which culture we come from. For thousands of years, humans, individually and collectively, have caused harm to animals, including crimes against individual animals, animal species, the animal kingdom and animal spirit. In contrast, animals give humans food, clothing, transport, labour force, companionship and inspiration, contributing much to the evolution of Homo sapiens and human civilization. Standing in front of the other inhabitants of the planet, we human beings are all guilty, and some societies may be guiltier than others, notwithstanding the various disguises and excuses for causing such suffering that have been put forward in the name of culture or tradition. On the other hand, in every age and in every place, there are always good, kind and wise people who act or speak up on behalf of our animal friends to make their cries heard and their suffering weigh on our conscience, at least the conscience of some of us. Despite the importance and prominence of animals and animal symbols in Chinese culture, animal suffering is not a topic taught in schools in China or discussed as an intellectual matter and is not an issue of concern in law, whether today or in the past. The few people who write about animal suffering or assist animals are often dismissed as chi bao le cheng de (having eaten too much food with nothing better to do) or worse. I was one of the oblivious Chinese, born, bred and educated in China many years ago, until an American family member asked me to contemplate the pain that animals might have experienced in Chinese cooking. Animal pain is everywhere in Chinese daily life, but most choose not to see. However, this is starting to change. In 2007, I wrote a book in Chinese, Animals Are Not Things, published in China; it introduced Western animal law to Chinese readers. It is both appropriate and obligatory that I now write a book on animal law in China in English. This text focuses on the laws and regulatory framework of animal protection in contemporary China. It also documents China s nascent animal activism, a social movement that is trending as part of an emerging civil society in China. xii
Preface xiii Pinyin romanization of the Chinese language is used throughout the book unless other authors are being quoted. English translations of Chinese texts are my own unless indicated. Lengthy quotations in Chinese characters are found in Appendix 2.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Peter Singer for writing the Foreword for this book and for my earlier book in Chinese, Animals Are Not Things. His support for my work on Chinese animal liberation and for the animal cause in China in general has been a driving force and inspiration to me and many others in China. I also wish to thank my colleagues at Griffith University for their encouragement and support for my work on animals in the course of my academic career and during the writing of the book. I thank Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics; Professor David Favre, of the College of Law of Michigan State University; Professor Donald Broom, of Cambridge University; Professor Chang Jiwen, of the Law Institute of China, and many other fellow animal lawyers and advocates around the world. I have learned much from all of them in different disciplines and from various perspectives regarding animals. I pay tribute to the many hundreds of animal rescuers and volunteers I have become acquainted with over the past few years across China. I thank Ms Xu Yufeng, from Beijing, who has kindly let me use the cover photo she took on 3 August 2014 of the rescued dogs on a highway outside Beijing; it is a sad picture that truly speaks a thousand words. My ultimate indebtedness goes to my parents. Without their love, encouragement and support since I was young, I would not have been able to do what I am now doing. My father passed away in 2014; the pain of his loss remains in me and always will. I dedicate this book to his memory. I thank Larry, who read through the manuscript, and Mimi, Maomao, Genghis and Niuniu, who are no longer with me, and Mia, Mingming, Lanlan, Jianjian and Didi. I also thank Andrew, Dan, Mushu and Nellie. Andrew, your wisdom, encouragement and kindness are forever a source of inspiration for me. The law referred to in this text is current as of 30 April 2015. xiv