China’s growing animal rights movement is making its voice heard

China is the only major industrialised nation without major legislation against animal cruelty, but a growing number of campaigners hope to change this

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Peter Li from HSI investigates a Yulin dog meat market in 2015.

Published: 5:30am, 5 Dec 2016Updated: 2:14pm, 5 Dec 2016

Wearing fake fur animal suits, chains and masks, the men, women and children – members of Freedom for Animal Actors (FAA) – protest outside the Beijing Workers’ Stadium. “I’m a monkey, chained, starved and beaten to learn to perform unnatural tricks. If you love me, don’t see my performance,” they chant in the video, as they try to deter people from attending a circus in the stadium.

FAA is one of a growing number of grass-roots animal welfare groups sprouting up on the mainland, where the scene is very different from the one recalled by Jill Robinson, founder of Hong Kong-based Animals Asia.

Jill Robinson, Animals Asia founder. Photo: Nora Tam

“When I first came to China in 1985, there was only one animal welfare organisation in the country. Today there are hundreds,” says Robinson, who set up Hong kong-based Animals Asia in 1988 and has since rescued more than 500 bears – kept for harvesting bile, used in traditional medicine – from farms in China and Vietnam.

Robinson says it’s vital that the hard work of welfare groups on the mainland is not overlooked amid the barrage of negative images spread worldwide on social media, from dogs crammed into cages waiting to be eaten at the annual Yulin dog meat festival, live rabbits having their fur torn off, cats skinned and cooked alive, and the Asiatic black bears she has worked to free, to a lone polar bear trapped in a shopping mall in Guangzhou, and live fish and reptiles sealed in plastic pouches and sold as keyrings. The list goes on.

“The people of China are often the recipients of criticism from around the world when it comes to animal welfare. But there is an enormous and growing movement of animal activists in China today.”

Animals Asia’s welfare director Dave Neale agrees, and says groups such as the FAA will change hearts and minds on the mainland.

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