President Xi Jinping President of the People's Republic of China supports animal cruelty

My bold statement in the title is backed up, time and again, by the cruelty against cats and dogs perpetrated by the traders of these animals in supplying them to the cat and dog meat markets in the south of China; specifically, the city of Guangzhou where cat and dog meat is very popular.

That's the first point. The second point is this: President Xi has openly declared to the world in a speech that he supports the cat and dog meat market. He sees it as a tradition which should not be eradicated. Behind his permanent, plastic, fixed half-smile is a man who is cruel to animals.

That sinister fixed grin:

Xi Jinping can change things at a stroke but refuses to. That fixed grin hides a cruel heart. Picture: Wikipedia.

The president is very fond of Chinese traditions which is to be expected. What is not to be expected and what is not to be desired is to retain cultural traditions which are abjectly and obviously cruel to animals.

This shows a myopia in the president. It's a disregard of animal welfare. If the general disregard of animal welfare by the culture of the Chinese living in China interest you, you should read an article I wrote recently about the famous contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, who currently lives in Portugal.

He has exhibited all over the world and is a renowned artist. He is also well known to be a cat lover and he finds cats more interesting than humans.

RELATED: Brilliant, compassionate Ai Weiwei loves cats and finds them more interesting than humans.

In addition, he has shed some light on the cultural traditions of the Chinese living in China which helps explain why there is a prevalence of animal cruelty in that country combined with an almost total lack of animal welfare laws. There is no legal protection in China to almost all the animals in that country.

It is hard to comprehend that fact in the modern world. This is the 21st-century. Even the most backward country has animal welfare laws of some sort. And yet China resolutely refuses to introduce them.

And once again a story from that country emerges which supports this neglectful and archaic attitude towards animals.

Death Truck

It's all over the Internet news media. Every so often we get the same story from China about animal cruelty. In this instance almost 400 dogs and cats died in a China death truck. The animals were being shipped south as mentioned and because they pile the animals together in a rickety old truck in rusty cages lots of them die on the way. They die of starvation, lack of water, suffocation et cetera.

In all, almost 1500 animals were being trafficked on this occasion. Police stopped the truck on a highway heading south. It was halfway on its 1200 km journey according to Humane Society International.

Fortunately, there are some emerging animal welfare organisations in China which can step in and rescue these animals on occasions.

Rescuers gathered at the scene including staffers from Capital Animal Welfare Association.

It discovered hundreds of dead cats and dogs and the ones that weren't dead were found to suffer from open wounds, broken bones, respiratory disease and severe dehydration.

They were treated as best they could at the roadside and then transported to a nearby school as a holding facility in preparation taking them to shelters when and where possible.

The estimated that most of the 718 dogs on the truck was stolen pets. Yes, they were snatched from homes.

One worker said: "I’ve attended many rescues of dogs and cats from the meat trade, but never before have I encountered such a shocking scene. 

This was a death truck, crammed full of desperate, frightened, traumatised animals caged up with their dead and dying companions. The smell of death, diarrhoea and vomit was overwhelming, and the sound of the animals whimpering and crying for our attention, was just heart-breaking."

Many of the workers were shocked and had tears in their eyes. One of them said: "Such appalling cruelty bring shame on China and shame on the majority of Chinese people who want nothing to do with this despicable trade". If that was correct the people of China would be up in arms about it but they are not.

The truck drivers were detained by police and the trader is facing an investigation by the Agriculture Bureau. It is said that they may face charges for transporting sick animals across provincial boundaries without legally required quarantine papers.

Notice that they are in breach of some technicality. There's nothing wrong in China in shipping thousands of dogs and cats south to be eaten after being brutally slaughtered.

It is truly time that this stops and the best way to stop it if the President of the People's Republic of China bans the trade immediately.