YOU’VE HEARD of the One Child Policy in China. Now get ready for the One Dog Policy.
Growing irritation with dog excrement on the streets, fears about rabies and public anger at people abandoning unwanted puppies when they grow up, means China’s largest city Shanghai, is embarking on a massive crackdown to control the number of dogs.
Shanghai has a canine population of 800,000 and a human population of 23 million, but only around 140,000 of the dogs are registered and city officials say that since 2006, Shanghai has recorded at least 100,000 dog attacks each year.
From now on, people can only have one pooch or pay for the privilege. Any additional unregistered dogs will be turned over to government shelters, and owners who don’t comply face a potential 3,000 yuan (€327) fine.
To encourage people to licence their pooches, the annual management fee for each dog was reduced to 500 yuan (€55) in downtown areas and 100 yuan for the suburbs, according to the Shanghai Finance Bureau. At the moment it costs 2,000 yuan (€220) to register a dog.
Other new rules include requirements that dogs should be kept on a leash in public, that big dogs need to be muzzled and that any dog dirt needs to be picked up by the owners – or owners face a 200 yuan fine.
For many years, dog ownership in cities was seen as a bourgeois folly, banned by Chairman Mao Zedong, but as China opens up, many households now have pets and dog numbers have been soaring in the past few years.
Dogs already have to undergo mandatory vaccination, but from now on each dog must be implanted with a chip containing owners’ information under the skin near the neck.
“We only have some 30 clients today who bring their dogs to be vaccinated. Most dog owners still do not know they should bring their dogs to us,” a worker surnamed Han at the Angel Pets Clinic in Yangpu district told the Global Times newspaper.
People who already own more than one dog and registered them before the new law came into effect are allowed to keep their dogs.
“For many dog owners who have more than one dog, it is too hard to make the decision to keep one but abandon another,” said Lai Xiaoyu, the head of the China Small Animal Protection Association, Shanghai branch.