While China has experienced world-leading economic growth and presents itself as a compassionate and civilized society, its record on animal welfare remains deeply troubling. The abuse of animals runs rampant, and governments at multiple levels often appear indifferent. It remains one of the few countries in the world without comprehensive national legislation prohibiting animal cruelty.
Dog and cat meat is still legally marketed in certain cities. Some of the channels through which the meat is obtained are notably disturbing, including stolen companion animals. Abandoned pets also constitute a principal source.
Stray dogs and cats are particularly a problem in China because some owners casually abandon their pets, which are treated as disposable possessions rather than sentient beings. These dogs and cats are then forced to wander the streets, endure harsh weather, and subsist on scavenged garbage while constantly facing the danger of being beaten or killed.
A recent case of extreme animal cruelty in Jieyang City in the Guangdong province on June 28 triggered unprecedented public outcry. A young female dog and her puppies were brutally tortured and killed by a group of teenagers. The young mother, barely a year old, described as gentle and people-loving, was a stray in the Pingpu village in Jieyang City. She was lured by the group of teenagers into an alley, with her two-week-old puppies following behind. The teenagers roped a wire around her neck and beat her with sticks which had nails driven into them. She remained near her puppies despite the attack out of her maternal instincts. The teens then turned their savagery to the puppies and beat them to death. As the mother was witnessing her puppies dying, the teens doused gasoline on her and lit her on fire. Unsatisfied, a few of the teenagers beat her more with the sticks while she was engulfed in fire. She collapsed with her eyes toward her dead puppies as she drew her last breath. Reportedly, her eyes were gouged out at the end.
After videos of the act were posted on social media by the perpetrators, many in Mainland China expressed indignation and disgust. The news traveled beyond Mainland China, drawing statements from Human Rights Watch and an online petition on Change.org that gathered tens of thousands of signatures within two weeks.
What followed inside China looked less like reflection than damage control. On June 30, the local government’s own notice on the case, alongside its account of what would happen to the boys, asked internet users “not to spread related information.” Platforms moved quickly after that. Posts sympathetic to the dog, who came to be known online as Wang Wang, were pulled from Weibo within moments of being published, including a statement from Taiwanese actress Joe Chen Chiao-en, which disappeared shortly after she posted it, and a video from actor Du Jiang. In Guangzhou, screens along the Beijing Road pedestrian street that had been displaying memorial tributes went dark after staff said they’d been instructed to take them down. A street mural painted in the dog’s memory in Chengdu was covered over. A leaked internal notice from a district internet affairs office in Shenyang reportedly branded the public mourning a “political risk” and directed officials to inspect commercial LED screens for similar displays.
Companion-animal welfare campaigns tied to the case ran into the same wall. Suppaw, a Hong Kong adoption platform, crowdfunded HK$95,000 in about two hours to place Wang Wang’s image on a public tram; the wording cleared review, but the tram company blocked the dog’s photo itself, citing concern that it might unsettle public sentiment. A gym owner who had hung a memorial banner honoring the dog and her puppies took it down after repeated police visits. None of this suppression has touched the underlying problem: China still has no national law criminalizing cruelty to companion animals.
To date, none of the teenagers or their families have issued an apology. The village officials who are typically the first line of disciplinary authority maintain a defiant stand against the condemnations. There are unconfirmed reports on social media that some of the villagers are actually brutally killing more village dogs and cats as revenge for the outside denunciation.
City officials responded by stating that the incident had been investigated and that the teenagers would likely be sent to a special education facility for a period of reeducation. Information about this school circulated on social media indicating that it appears unlikely to serve as a place for either meaningful punishment or effective rehabilitation. Authorities above the city level have not issued any statement on this particular incident or the dire animal abuse situation in China in general.
In the absence of comprehensive anti-cruelty legislation and with the silence of the Central and Provincial governments, people inclined to torture and kill animals feel emboldened. More are committing these acts and posting them on social media, as a form of entertainment as well as a show of defiance against condemnation. Videos and pictures of similarly barbaric acts continue to emerge from Shandong, Guizhou, and Hebei.
In the meantime, government-directed mass culling campaigns continue. Unlike many countries, which humanely euthanize their companion animals, such killings in China typically resort to bludgeoning, throat slitting, and drowning, among other brutal methods.
The widespread condemnation of the Jieyang case by many Chinese citizens demonstrates that concern for animal welfare is growing within Chinese society, even as the state treats that concern as something to be managed rather than heard. As one of the world’s largest pet-owning nations, China faces intensifying pressure to strengthen animal welfare protections through public education. A national anti-animal cruelty law in China is also long overdue.
