Pet Services Under Fire

Thanks to the Vancouver Sun for this news.

Dogfight hits cyberspace

The battle over dog ownership in Beijing has spread to the Internet as officials target businesses offering pet services. In the days leading up to last weekend’s pro-dog protest near the Beijing Zoo, officers from the Internet unit of the police began visiting operators of pet-related websites, the Washington Post reports. Several officers showed up at the offices of Chinapet.com, which runs dozens of chat rooms, and ordered that posts containing the words “protest” or “gathering” be deleted.

Dog owners are upset with a government campaign limiting each household to one dog and banning dogs taller than 36 cm in the name of fighting rabies. The face-off has also exposed fault lines between older bureaucrats with a mandate to keep public order and a growing middle class that no longer takes the traditional Chinese view of dogs as dishonorable or corrupt. During China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, people who kept dogs were accused of bourgeois tendencies.