China Briefing | China’s coronavirus battle may be ending but its war on eating wild animals has just begun
- China’s latest ban on the trade and consumption of wild animals will wipe out wet markets, but they are just the tip of the iceberg
- To avoid simply driving the problem underground, a whole-of-society approach will be needed – and for years to come
But the parallel battle against the most likely source of the outbreak – the trade and consumption of wild animals – will take much longer, probably years, if not decades.
Beijing’s announcement last month of a comprehensive and permanent ban has won praise from the international community for boosting the global fight against the illegal trade because China is a major destination for trafficked animals.
Banning is easy and makes great headlines but eradicating the notorious and superstitious habits of eating exotic animals for health or status and the practice of harvesting animal parts for medicinal use, deeply ingrained in Chinese culture and history for thousands of years, will be a lot harder.
Moreover, after years of lax regulation and corruption, the trade and consumption of wild animals, including those born and raised in dubious breeding farms, has spawned an immensely profitable and well-organised industry, yielding 125 billion yuan (US$18 billion) in output and employing more than 6 million people in 2016, the latest year for which the data was compiled, according to Chinese media. But these figures merely cover the supply chain, which was legal until the latest permanent ban last month, and do not include the vast size of the black market.
China’s record of regulating and controlling the wildlife trade and consumption is nowhere near adequate.
