Contributed by Sha Shuiqing
Translated by Liu Xinkan
Recently, the‘One Family Can Keep Only One Dog’policy had officially started to take effect in Guangzhou. Most people involved doubt about this policy, they questioned that government seems to meddle too much to these trivial things. It is crucial to make it clear that keeping puppies is a matter of just one or the public. Chinese Version >>
People tend to take it for granted that keeping dogs or cats at home is a very personal thing, there’s no business with the government. But in fact, the problem is definitely not that simple. All the‘dog news’happened in Shanghai as well as many other cities has clearly conveyed the message that it has already led to serious social problems for the urban dwellers to keep dogs. Besides of the threats by the homeless dogs and rabies, uncivilized dog-walking behavior is inducing more and more conflicts in residential communities. Many citizens are calling for measures taken by the government to strengthen the administration of the dogs. In this view, keeping dogs is a matter of public affairs rather than a personal hobbies.
Thus, it is the responsibility for government to“interfere with”such a public affair and carry out regulations to do some strict on keeping pets in the city . The comments of“meddle too much”against the government could be regarded as an ignorance of the government’s function or as the attitude of selfish to the society, which cares little about the social problems caused by keeping pets. An earlier debate said that Chinese are not civilized enough to keep dogs. This topic might have gone over the line. Nevertheless it reflected the degree of the social conflicts caused by irresponsible dog-keeping behavior to some extent. Considering these existing problems, can we arbitrarily judge that the government has reached too far? And to describe the government’s efforts as‘the big brother of China’is absolutely blind political attack. At that point of view, it seems that a society with no government tends to be the best. Can the society keep going without the government? The answer is obviously not.
Although there are still a lot for the government to improve, and many policies or regulations are yet to be improved or revised through reinforced scientific and democratic strategic decisions, we do believe that our government makes their decisions as well as the rules based on the common opinion from the public. That’s their duty on other things rather than on the pet management merely.