In early May, China’s social media landscape buzzed with disturbing details of an emerging mail-order pet craze trending since at least January. Local animal rights activists published videos online revealing dozens of small crates containing puppies and kittens, thirsty and starving, neatly arranged outside of a dingy Chengdu depot. City authorities addressed the illegal activity by, astonishingly, returning to sender; never mind that they botched the return address. Current Chinese law prescribing the treatment of animals is intended to ensure sanitation and disease prevention in food products—i.e., the animals themselves—not promote animal welfare. While these animals may have been considered potential meals in some regions in years past, the mail-orders from last month were instead unwitting participants in a nascent ecommerce practice for sending and receiving surprise unknown goods, dubbed “blind boxes.”
For Chinese netizens, this phenomenon was a stark reminder of how far China still has to go in addressing animal abuse. Despite repeated calls from civil society, animal cruelty laws remain squarely off the books. Yet, the fact that the videos generated widespread controversy also highlights a progress of sorts. Pet ownership, once rare in China, is dramatically increasing as the everyman’s relationship with and understanding of animals continues to evolve alongside the country’s rapid social and economic development. The very existence of blind-boxed mail orders of pets, troubling as it may be, sends another signal: China’s pet industry is booming.
King of consumer goods
During last year’s 11/11 or “Single’s Day,” China’s—and the world’s—largest ecommerce event, cat food, of all things that can be purchased online, was the top-selling category on Tmall Global, Alibaba’s cross-border ecommerce marketplace. Other pet-related goods and services are also performing well. According to figures from China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the compound growth rate of China’s pet industry was 49.1 percent from 2010 to 2016. That’s the fastest growth among all consumer goods categories. In the past 10 years, China’s pet economy, including food, toys, and supplies, in addition to the pets themselves, has grown by an astounding 2000 percent.
Read More at https://www.chinabusinessreview.com/the-extraordinary-rise-of-chinas-pet-industry/
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