In addition to shock and outrage, these incidents have led many to question recent media portrayals of mainland China’s progressive attitudes about dog ownership. After a decades long ban, China’s dog lovers are finally permitted to have pets and they seem to be making up for lost time. China’s canine population is estimated to be between 80-200 million. The insatiable demand for pet dogs has forced local Chinese governments to revise previous tight restrictions on raising dogs. More than half a million pet dogs are currently registered in Beijing and it’s predicted that the numbers could soon exceed one million. More than 700,000 are registered in Shanghai.

China’s booming pet trade in attributed to improved living standards among the urban middle class. Some cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, have become thoroughly westernized, including a burgeoning dog show scene and a thriving pet products industry. Estimated at $7.5 billion presently, it is projected to be worth $50 billion by 2010. Like dog owners everywhere, China’s pampered pets are well cared for, receiving the best food, veterinary care and all the luxuries money can buy.

Although show dogs and Beijing pets have gotten wide attention in the media of late, the majority of China’s dogs are concentrated in poor rural communities As in many rural areas dogs are not only pets, their owners depend on them for herding, hunting and home defense. The government estimates that 70 percent of rural households have dogs. Outside of major cities, there is no mandatory registration, licensing, vaccination or leash laws.  Owners in these remote areas have little or no access to health care for themselves or their pets. Approximately 3 percent of these dogs are vaccinated against rabies and many owners are not even aware of the fact that they should be.

Once the rabies virus becomes established within an animal population, disease transmission can persist at endemic levels for decades. This is exactly the case in southern China due to lack of information, education and access to preventative vaccinations.  Random testing regularly confirms that the virus is continually present at varying levels in many eastern and southern provinces. Although it does not receive the publicity of AIDS or TB, rabies continues to pose a major threat to human life. It can be described as China’s “sleeping giant”

Since 1950 there have been four major rabies epidemics in China at ten year intervals. The most severe lasted from 1980-90 resulting in more than 55,000 deaths. In 2005, six rabid dogs were identified in Chongqing, in southwest China. By the time these dogs were captured and destroyed they had bitten and infected 15 other dogs, and 52 people. 

The bite from a rabid dog no longer amounts to an automatic death sentence. Modern rabies treatment is almost 100 % effective. However, a typical course of treatment takes four weeks and costs well over $1000, making it inaccessible to inhabitants of rural China. Once incubation of the disease is complete there is no treatment, and it is invariably fatal.

Today, China has the second highest reported incidence of human rabies cases worldwide and the bulk of documented cases are attributed to dog bites. The startling statistics are generally regarded as a low estimate because rabies remains a very difficult disease to diagnose especially in live humans. This is partly due to its long incubation period which can range from 1-3 months. There is no single rabies test that can provide definitive results.

Last year, this fact came to America’s attention when several transplant recipients developed rabies after receiving compromised organs. The donor, a drug user, was assumed to have died of a drug overdose. Doctors never attributed his illness or death to rabies until investigators made the link.

Rabies has been recognized as one of the world’s most dreaded killers since 2300 BC. It was so feared by ancient Greeks, they had two gods dedicated to healing the disease.  The virus is highly contagious and it isn’t necessary to be bitten to contract it. Rabies can be transmitted via any contact with tears, saliva or mucous from an infected animal. The virus can survive up to 48 hours in dead animals.

 Rabies manifests in two ways, both forms cause intense neurological symptoms and abnormal behavior. The less common form known as “dumb” rabies, accounts for 20% of all cases. Characterized by depression and paralysis, symptoms that sometimes give the impression that a wild animal is docile and friendly. Furious rabies presents with the bizarre behavior usually associated with the disease, hallucinations, frothing at the mouth, aggression, frenzied biting, convulsions and hydrophobia.

Today, American dog owners take rabies vaccine for granted and most put rabies in the same category as bubonic plague or leprosy, something you read about but don’t worry about. The number of rabies-related human deaths in the United States has plummeted from more than 100 annually at the turn of the century to only one or two each year. And those are invariably due to individuals not seeking treatment because they failed to realize they were infected.

We’ve become very complacent very fast considering that widespread rabies vaccination only came into general use after WWII.  Prior to 1960, 90% of rabies cases reported to the CDC occurred in domestic animals. Today, almost all confirmed cases are found in wildlife. Even so, up to 18,000 Americans seek treatment for rabies each year after coming in contact with potentially rabid animals.

Obviously, vaccination works. England’s six month quarantine, regularly attacked as a an outdated relic of the past, kept Britain rabies free for a century. Prior to that, public officials struggled for centuries to devise a socially acceptable rabies control scheme. Dog owners objected to mandatory licensing, leash laws and muzzle laws. But these were far preferable to the customary rabies control measure employed prior to that.  Local officials decreed a compulsory dog cull if they feared a rabies epidemic, exactly like recent events in China. Culls regularly took place in major cities in Europe and the US well into the nineteenth century. Although animal control laws have since been hijacked by the animal rights movement, many were originally enacted as a means to control rabies without resorting to mass slaughter.  And they required decades of ongoing effort to effectively limit the spread of rabies.

A major reason why the rabies cull has received so much publicity is that it is one of the few uncensored news stories coming out of China.  Animal rights groups wasted no time condemning the action pointing out China’s abysmal record of animal protection. They denounced these extreme measures as unnecessary and ineffective, suggesting a multitude of solutions that have proven effective in western countries.

Rabies control measures, easily implemented in the US pose a far greater challenge in China. But there is no question that they could work. According to the WHO, China could halve its present number of rabies cases by 2015 through compulsory vaccination and sterilization of dogs in rural areas.  A single vaccination can protect a dog from rabies for as long as seven years. Implementing these practices would require educating dog owners, recruiting health care workers and getting access to several million does of vaccine.

Human immunization programs in China are perpetually hindered by red tape, lack of funds and a shortage of trained health care workers. Wide sectors of the population in remote, economically depressed areas remain unprotected against common diseases like measles and polio.