Over the past month, we’ve been hearing heartwarming stories about Ukrainian refugees taking their pets with them. We’ve also heard about worldwide animal organizations who have been helping care for other animals that couldn’t leave the country.

But in Shanghai, China, the fate of pets is much worse, due to that country’s stringent lockdown rules. It doesn’t matter how important a dog or cat is in the life of a Shanghai resident — animals are expendable, often in the most brutal ways imaginable.

Killing Pets Because of Covid

Last month, authorities in the city of Langfang ordered the killing of all indoor animals belonging to Covid-positive residents of a particular neighborhood. They thought — mistakenly — that these pets would be vectors of the disease. While humans can transfer Covid to pets, it’s not the other way around.

The order read:

“In order to ensure the safety of positive patients returning home, after communicating with the Langfang City Center for Disease Control and Prevention, it is necessary to comprehensively and thoroughly kill the animals domesticated by positive patients as soon as possible.”

Fortunately, there was an immediate backlash by residents, and the Chinese authorities scrapped the plan. However, it’s unclear as to how many animals died in the meantime.

Recently Covid has surged in Shanghai. Pets there have not gotten any reprieve, only brutality.

Dogs and Cats Slaughtered in Shanghai

In Shanghai, a city of about 25 million people, Chinese authorities have once again placed the city’s residents in lockdowns. As for their pets — they have often fared even worse.

Screenshot: Winston Sterzel/Twitter.

Recently a “Covid prevention guard” beat a corgi to death with a shovel in a residential area after the little dog ran after a bus. Some reported that the dog was chasing the bus that was carrying its owner away for quarantine after the man had tested positive for Covid. The dog’s owner had let it loose to live as a stray after the neighborhood committee refused to care for it. They were afraid of catching Covid from the dog.

The owner said:

“We hoped to let him outside and be like a stray dog. We didn’t want him to starve to death.  As long as he could live it would be ok. We never expected that he would be beaten to death the moment we had left.”

This happened despite the fact that the CCP had said they would stop killing pets.

The CCP lied, saying it would stop murdering pets, this welsh corgi was beaten to death today minutes after it’s owner was taken away to a quarantine facility, the heartless and barbaric CCP have no care or compassion, the citizens of Shanghai are begging for this to stop pic.twitter.com/AzfIzBm1z5

— Winston Sterzel (@serpentza) April 7, 2022

Because of the outcry, three officials who were responsible for killing the poor corgi have been sacked. As for the committee which refused to take care of the dog, they responded with this:

“At that time, the workers did not consider (the matter) very comprehensively. We will communicate with the owner and offer compensation later.”

Small comfort to a family which lost its beloved pet.

But dogs aren’t the only pets to suffer under CCP Covid restrictions. Cats are being killed, too, as seen in this posting from WeChat on Chinese social media.

Chinese authority , is systematically exterminating the Covid patients's pets , in name of '' for your health ''.

These cats are waiting for their '' animal euthanasia ''. pic.twitter.com/Lo7R6buqYN

— Songpinganq (@songpinganq) April 4, 2022

What happened to these cats? Who knows? But we can bet that their demise didn’t come via “humane euthanization.”

Why Does the CCP Kill Innocent Pets?

Let’s be clear: Chinese people love their pets. And it’s not they who are killing them; it’s their government.

Winston Sterzel, a South African blogger and video producer who lived in China for 14 years, tweeted this:

“To make things clear, it is the Chinese government and not the people carrying out these barbaric pet murders, the people of China are helpless and powerless against this policy, they can’t stop their pets being slaughtered.”

Owning pets by the middle class is a product of Western civilization. In the past, as we know, people kept dogs for utilitarian work. Cats were kept around because they were mousers. Only the elite could afford to keep pets as something to love — consider the origin of toy dog breeds.

But with the rise of income in European and American societies, the middle class found they could also keep pets. As such, society evolved to see dogs and cats as worthy of its protections. We now have laws to protect animals, and our social order has approved. Pets are good for people and families, and animal abuse is now abhorrent in the West.

But Communist China is a nation in which people don’t exist for their families, or even for themselves. Instead, they exist only to serve the state. And as for animals — it doesn’t matter what happens to them. Nor does it matter if the people who love their pets suffer at the wanton destruction of their dogs and cats. If the CCP needs to slaughter their pets, so be it. It’s for the good of the state.

Consider it a feature, not a bug, of Communist authoritarianism.

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Featured image: kitty.green66/flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0.