XINHUA

Responsible pet lovers

"One of the most important reasons for the large number of homeless pets is the lack of responsibilities of pet raisers," revealed Hua. She suggested efforts should be made to promote people to raise pets in a more responsible manner and related laws be made to punish those who abuse or abandon their pets randomly.  

Hua noted that another reason for the large number of homeless pets is the lack of control at pet markets, where people can easily buy dogs and cats without medical inspection or quarantine.

"We encourage people to help homeless pets through adopting them from animal rescue centers and provide them with a home, instead of buying pets [from the markets]," said Hua. "These pets have been registered and medically inspected."

Chang has studied legislation on animal protection for years. He suggested using information technology to prevent people from abandoning pets at will through embedding IC cards with the information of the owners into the pets. "Once a pet is abandoned, we can find its owner with the information and punish him or her," Chang told Legal Daily.  

Animal welfare

"The 21st Century is widely regarded as a century of promoting animal welfare because the focus of legislation on animal protection has changed from anti-cruelty to providing basic welfare to animals," said Xia Li, a court official in Beijing, in her blog.

So far, more than 100 countries have formulated laws to safeguard the welfare of animals. "Protecting animal welfare does not mean people cannot use animals. We must find a way to reasonably and morally utilize them so as to provide basic rights for the animals that make contributions and sacrifices for human beings," said Hua.

China's only law related to animal protection is the Law on the Protection of Wildlife, which was adopted in 1988. But this law only targets smuggling and poaching of wild animals without consideration of animal welfare.

The Regulations of Beijing Municipality on Raising Dogs bans dog owners from abusing and abandoning dogs randomly; but it has no corresponding punitive clauses. "So, many people just don't abide by the regulations," said Hua.

In 2010, some experts proposed a draft of the law against animal abuse. According to a survey conducted by sina.com, one of China's most popular web portals, more than 80 percent of the responders supported the draft.