Letters to the Editor
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Everyone can help
I hope everyone who has any cultural or familial connection to China or Asia reads this article and is moved by it enough to put continual pressure in all possible ways to change the attitudes and practices recounted here.
To say that dogs and cats don't matter if people are suffering misses the point that a culture of indifference to suffering of this nature, especially of beings who are so connected to human society over many many many centuries, is of the same kind and is a symptom of the same sanctioned and militant cruelty of the powerful over the weak. If there is a way of opening hearts to understanding that affirming a culture of pain for the weak is bad for everyone, human and animal alike, it will do much to turn on the light of humane treatment of all those who are weak, both human and animal, pet and domesticated alike everywhere and especially in China where it now there are no limits to the cruelty at all and it is culturally sanctioned.
China was able to move away from such practices as foot binding and the worst of the inequalities between men and women, which seemed totally entrenched in the culture, as well as abandoning the expensive experiment they conducted in a particularly terrible form of totalitarian communism, so there is no reason to believe that China could not be moved to abandon these attitudes and practices too. Obviously there is a long way to go for all of us, but I think that if everyone who has any connection through relatives or business or culturally with China or Asia speaks out clearly and pressures in any way they can, it will have a huge impact on what the future will be like for many.