Silence of the Cats

We can understand the Chinese media’s optimistic reportage of their upcoming Olympic extravaganza – they have a clear motive. What baffles is the ongoing onslaught of pre-Olympic party-pooping, courtesy of the Western Main Stream Media. Here’s a particularly salient example, from the British online newspaper Daily Mail, “Olympics clean-up Chinese style: Inside Beijing’s shocking death camp for cats”.

The article tells of a government campaign to not only round up strays, but also terrify cat owners into handing over their pets to the massive cull, in order to prevent a possible outbreak of disease, such as SARS. While the claim of feral cat-culling holds water, telltale signs of yellow journalism yield themselves to the mildly discriminating eye.

To start with, it uses button-pushing phrases like “secretive government pounds” and “death camps”. Then it goes into completely unsubstantiated stories of the cat panic that seems to have seized the city, such as kindergarten teachers beating cats to death in front of traumatized students. And while Christie Yang of Animals Asia confirms the culling program, Erika Helms, Executive Director of the Jane Goodall Institute for China, based in Beijing, is not aware of any scare tactics designed to scare pet owners into sending Fluffy off to an early demise.

Getting a feed on the People’s pigeon wire is easy. One need only stroll into a few da yuans, the social-realist apartment compounds that are home to millions of older Beijingers, the state-owned companies they used to be employed by forming the cores of these complexes. Red arm-band brigades still thrive in these areas, up-to-date on all local government policy, although obsolescence has rendered them given to gossip, even with foreigners. Of eleven surveyed, none were aware of any notices encouraging cat owners to surrender their pets, although eight claimed awareness of increased efforts to round up strays. None of the communities had any anti-feline signs posted in public gathering areas, and no less than half a dozen stray cats were spotted while visiting.

Such a survey naturally falls short of hard-hitting investigative journalism, but so does the Daily Mail’s claim in the same article that Beijing’s drivers are only allowed on the road three times a week.

The ethics of culling and how humane its execution is a weighty subject, but not the one at hand. Rather, it is the way the issue is handled by the Western MSM, as is any subject that can potentially deflate Chinese pride in hosting the summer games. Let’s look at the Athens Olympics by way of contrast. The only mainstream attention called to its feral cat culling program was that it had increased the number of rats in the city. Athens has significant air pollution, but dealt with the problem free from threats by the American team to don face masks as soon as they stepped off the plane.

So while no one at China Expat is getting red envelopes from government agencies [more’s the pity] or condones animal abuse, we’d like to suggest that with so much government malfeasance going unreported in its own backyard, the western MSM engages in hair-trigger China-bashingat the expense of its ever dwindling credibility.

No related posts.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.