From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Animal Welfare awareness of Chinese youth
by Peter Li, Zu Shuxian, & Su Pei-feng

In early 2002 five bears at the Beijing Zoo were attacked on
two separate occasions with sulfuric acid by a mysterious visitor.
For months Chinese media gave extensive coverage to the incident,
including the eventual prosecution and conviction of perpetrator Liu
Hai-yang.
Coming from a single-child family, Liu Hai-yang was among
China’s 80 million “little emperors” who reputedly harbor an
inordinate sense of entitlement. A science major at Beijing’s
prestigious Tsinghua University, Liu showed no signs of remorse. He
questioned his detention, demanded his release, and defended his
act as a “scientific experiment.”
To animal advocates, the incident illustrated why the
passage of anti-cruelty legislation must not be delayed any longer.
Yet others, including some Chinese officials, argued that
proposals to legislate animal welfare are beyond what China is ready
to accept.
The Liu case was among the topics most discussed at an
October 2002 symposium on animal welfare held in Heifei, Anhui
Province. Responding to the issues raised there, with
co-sponsorship from the World Society for the Protection of Animals
and the University of Houston downtown campus, we surveyed Chinese
college students to investigate whether the alleged “little emperor”
syndrome can actually be found in attitudes toward animals, and what
the prevailing attitudes toward animals are likely to be in coming
decades, as today’s college students become China’s future leaders.

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