The police car pulled into a Beijing park, sending a girl and her mother rushing to scoop their black and white puppy into a plastic shopping bag.
"Bring it out, let's have some cooperation," said a burly officer, swinging open the back of the patrol car where a dozen other dogs sat in cages. The women handed over the animal with a whimper of protest and bicycled away.
Beaten, eaten and treated like vermin, dogs in China have never had it easy. But owners say Beijing, China's tightly policed capital, is particularly tough. To burnish its bid for the 2008 Olympics, the city has intensified checks for clandestine canines.
The woman and her daughter's crime was to not have a license. Because licenses are prohibitively expensive for most residents, many dog owners simply abandon their confiscated pooches, then buy another for a fraction the cost of registering.
China introduced the Pekinese and other breeds to the world, but Beijing is, at first glance, dog-free. Unlike in many Western cities, there's rarely dog poop on its pavements.
Only early in the morning and after 8pm does the city allow owners to walk legally registered dogs. Owners call it the "no sunshine on dogs" policy. Unlicensed dogs can be seized at any time.
Dog ownership was considered a bourgeois affectation by Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) communist revolutionaries and discouraged after they seized power in 1949.
Ownership was tolerated after Mao died in 1976, but Beijing imposed tight restrictions in the 1990s under then-mayor Chen Xitong (陳希同). He reportedly hated dogs after being bitten as a boy.
Large dogs are banned, although officials don't define how big is too big. Registering a small dog costs 5,000 yuan (US$600), about half the average annual wage in Beijing, and another 2,000 yuan each year. Fines are added if the animal was first seized as an illegal.
For some Chinese, dogs are dinner -- not pets. Beijing has many dog meat restaurants and dog is on the menus of many ordinary eateries too.
But dog ownership is growing among well-heeled Beijingers, perhaps in part because couples are allowed just one child. Parents tend to indulge their "little emperors" and older couples look to dogs for company after their only child leaves home.
Beijing, a metropolis of nearly 14 million people, now has at least 100,000 dogs and owners spend about 20 million yuan annually on their canines, the official China Daily newspaper said.
Illegal street vendors hide puppies inside their jackets, hold them up by the scruff of the neck for passers-by and sell them for as little as 100 yuan. Most owners whose illegal dogs are seized simply abandon them and buy new ones, said Wang Liqun, a critic of Beijing's dog laws who owns six dogs -- two registered.
"They've essentially taken away the right of ordinary working people to keep dogs. It's like they want to annihilate them altogether," he said.
Special police divisions check dog permits and round up illegals. Police warned of intensified checks as part of a cleanup of Beijing for Olympic inspectors who assessed the city's 2008 bid in February.
"We hope those with dogs without licenses will get rid of them or quickly obtain registrations," said police notices stuffed into residential mail boxes.
Police won't comment on crackdowns but defend the city's dog laws as necessary to "protect the health and safety of the people and preserve public order and the urban environment."
RSS