Wang Xiaohua

(Professor of literature at School of Humanities, Shenzhen University)

Following the cat abuse incident this year, the people of Nanjing set fire to stray dogs. All indications are that such mutilations of life are on the rise.

It is ironic that, in the face of such callousness, existing laws have no right to stop it. The police can also only morally reprimand the perpetrators after receiving a report from the public - China does not currently have legislation on animal welfare. To date, the punishment of the perpetrators of abuses has come only from the administrative and moral level. The cold reality compels us to rise from the level of conscience to the level of law and once again look for possible ways to legislate for animal welfare.

It is recalled that some time ago, there were calls for animal welfare legislation which was not followed by a scarcity of supporters. In the opinion of many Chinese, the most important thing now is to solve the human problem. It seems too extravagant to talk about animal welfare before the basic problems of man have been solved. Those who hold such views, though justified, are supported by what is in fact a one-sided humanitarian ethic. People and animals are members of the world, and what we do to animals is what we do to people, and that could not be more obvious. At the end of the nineteenth century, when the West began to focus on animal welfare issues, universal interpersonal equality had not yet been achieved in Western society, and the status of people of color, women, and the working class was relatively low. It was in the 20th century, when animal welfare was legally protected, that the process of human emancipation was also fully completed in the West. Now, any discriminatory discourse (involving race, gender, age, class, geography) is as much prohibited by Western law as animal cruelty. In contrast, in China, which lacks an animal welfare bill, we find that discriminatory discourse and behavior are still prevalent in the land, and that laws protecting people's own rights are yet to be sound. Therefore, the relationship between animal protection and human liberation is not irrelevant. The two are, to a large extent, causal to each other.

Last year, during my visit to the UK, I noted the handling of a cat abuse case in the local court. The person concerned was summoned by the court and ordered to perform voluntary work in the community simply because he had not taken good care of the adopted cat. The outcry of condemnation subsided only after the perpetrators had publicly apologized to the community. The fact that cat abuse in China, which has reached the point of depriving animals of their lives, has been characterized as a moral event rather than a legal one is enough to make us think twice. The most effective protection, both for people and for other lives, comes from the law. Therefore, as the cat abuse case progresses to this day, we cannot help but sincerely call on China to legislate for animal welfare as soon as possible.