Police in the East City dis-
trict of Beijing, China, beat 351 dogs
to death during the second week of
February. “Our policy is to annihilate
them,” said district deputy chief of pub-
lic security Li Wenrui. Some other dis-
trict police bureaus spared smaller pure-
breds––if their owners could find homes
for them outside the city. Still others
killed dogs by strangulation, electrocu-
tion, and dragging them behind jeeps.
Press releases said the dogs were taken
to a shelter run by the Public Security
Ministry, but Jan Wong of the Toronto
Globe and Mail’s China Bureau reported
there is no such place. The Communist
government banned dogs as a nuisance
and a waste of food when it came to
power in 1949. Dogs have been hunted
out and killed every few years since
1951. Despite the killing, stepped up
since 1986, an estimated 100,000 dogs
inhabit Beijing, where a black market
dog can cost as much as many workers’
annual income. Foreigners and others
who can get dogs licensed and vaccinat-
ed may keep them––but rabies vaccine is
so scarce that the disease has killed as
many as 60,000 Chinese since 1980,
and most license applications are denied.
