No one knows how many dogs are stolen in China each year, but it is thought to be in the millions, according to Li of the Humane Society. “I don’t want them being served in a restaurant.” “I’m going to save as many of these dogs as possible,” said the Guangzhou activist, when asked if he would keep doing this work. They have since been posting photos of the animals online, hoping their owners will recognize and retrieve them. When the driver couldn’t produce any paperwork, the activists took possession of the dogs. The police asked the truck driver for his documents authorizing the dog shipment. Soon, more than 200 people had arrived and surrounded the truck, according to a Guangzhou activist who, fearing reprisal, asked that his name not be used. She contacted friends, who spread the news on WeChat and called the police. On the evening of May 27, a woman spotted a truck full of dogs parked near the center of Guangzhou, a major city in southern China. They then try to return the dogs to their owners, or find people who want to adopt them.

Linked by social media apps such as WeChat, activists have started tracking – and sometimes intercepting – the trucks that carry dogs to slaughterhouses. With the government unwilling to act, Chinese victims of pet theft are taking matters into their own hands. Li, who is also a policy adviser to the Humane Society International, many of China’s dog thieves come from the rural poor, who steal dogs as an easy source of money.

Lax policing and poverty also drive the trade. Yet the modern attachment to “man’s best friend” is clashing with a tradition that appears to date back two millennia, at least in some parts of China. An archaeological report this week found that the creators of the famed terracotta army ate dog meat. Chinese families care for 27 million pet dogs in the cities and nearly 100 million in the countryside, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Li, a specialist in Chinese animal welfare issues at the University of Houston.Ĭhina is increasingly a nation of dog owners as its swelling upper and middle classes spend time and money on pets. “The lawlessness and violation of the government’s own policies is right out in the open,” says Peter J. The next festival is scheduled for June 21. Some of these eateries are in Yulin, a city in the southeast China that, for the past six years, has held a notorious dog meat festival. The government has known about this black market for years, but has yet to police either the thieves or the dog meat restaurants. Why the ’70s are a blueprint – but not a destiny – for the 2020s

Sea of thieves pets