A Dog’s Life
CNN reported yesterday that China may be on the verge of banning human consumption of dogs and cats and imposing fines of as much as 500,000 renminbi (about $73,000) on shops and restaurants that serve the meat and up to 15 days in jail for their customers. The ostensible reason is cruelty: the animals are treated horribly and confined in tiny cages in deplorable conditions. But this can’t be the real reason. Plenty of other animals are treated as badly, or worse. The life of a pig prior to slaughter is no picnic either. The real reason seems to be that given by a certain Professor Chang Jiwen of the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences, who is one of the law’s top campaigners. “Cats and dogs are loyal friends to humans,” he said. “A ban on eating them would show China has reached a new level of civilization.” This is a curiously selective concern for what the rest of the world thinks. The Chinese government couldn’t care less that it is seen as a ruthless suppressor of dissidents, religious sects, and ethnic minorities, nor that its aggressive expansion into Africa is seen by many as a form of neo-imperialism just as objectionable as the original. But being thought of as dog-eaters is a step too far.
I’ve never eaten dog, and although I would try it if it were served to me I’d have to overcome a certain squeamishness. But I certainly don’t object to it. It was a sad day in 2007 when the State of Illinois, under pressure from animal rights campaigners, shut down the last horse slaughterhouse in the U.S. I don’t consume a lot of horse meat, though I’ve had it several times, but it’s disturbing when some people’s irrational prejudices are enacted into law, depriving others of their innocent pleasures.
Dog is widely eaten, not just in China but in Korea and Vietnam as well. Its aficionados claim it has restorative properties, keeping you warm in winter and helping you to sweat healthily in summer weather. CNN reporters visited the Han River Dog Meat Restaurant in Guangzhou, where “diners can choose from a long list of menu items, including dog soup, dog steak, dog with tofu,” and dog hot pot, which most people prefer spicy.
China, after the disasters, civil war, Japanese and British imperialism, and Maoist tyranny that characterized most of its history during the 19th and 20th centuries, has discovered a new pride and assertiveness. It no longer feels a need to kowtow before the Western powers, and increasingly touts its political and economic model as preferable to the chaos and paralysis it detects in the West. So why this cultural cringe, this attempt to prove to outsiders that Chinese are proper dog and cat lovers (as pets, not meat) just like Americans and Europeans?
I suspect it may be that the Chinese authorities, behind their swagger, are feeling insecure. For the past 30 years or so, the grand bargain – we’ll give you material prosperity as long as you don’t even think about liberty and democracy – has held sway, apart from occasional irruptions like Tienanmen Square in 1989. But the cracks are showing. The prosperity is confined mainly to the industrial and commercial centers on the coast, while in the interior people live as miserably as they did during Mao’s Great Leap Forward. The national government turns a blind eye as corrupt local officials and businessmen literally enslave workers, many of them children. Tainted and unsafe products continue to flow out of Chinese factories.
Inevitably, China will overtake the U.S. sometime during this century to become the world’s largest economy. China has become a major player in world affairs and is not afraid to throw its weight around. The G-2 grouping of China and the United States threatens to consign the G-8 and the G-20 and all the other Gs to irrelevance. And yet…
China’s leaders must wonder how much longer they can ride the tiger before they end up inside it. They know that no one, inside China or without, will shed a single tear for their demise. They are trying to balance Chinese exceptionalism – it is the Middle Kingdom after all – with a desire to fit in. Having long ago swapped their Mao jackets and caps for suits and ties, now they want to stop their people eating dogs and cats so that they can appear to others as ordinary folks, nothing to get alarmed about. Not having to worry about legal niceties, if the Chinese government wants to close all the dog restaurants it will do so, driving the practice underground where foreign tourists and business people can’t see it. That may satisfy some, though personally I’d rather share a dog hot pot with democrats than a hot dog with dictators.
