Four-legged friends instead of children – Curiosities for China’s pets

More and more Chinese people are keeping pets. There is no shortage of four-legged friends. But there is also a worrying development behind this trend.

Beijing – Baobao probably already knows what is coming next. This is not the first time the little Pekingese has been to Dr. Hu Yusheng’s veterinary practice for Chinese medicine in the north of China’s capital Beijing.

Very carefully, Dr. Hu places a few acupuncture needles on the 13-year-old four-legged friend’s back. The little one has to endure about half an hour with his lampshade-like neck brace and the needles that his owner wants to use to treat Baobao’s long-lasting cough.

An important part of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is to look at the body as a whole. “I don’t specifically treat the disease, but rather Baobao’s Qi and blood flow,” explains Dr. Hu. On animals, he mainly uses acupuncture and moxa therapy, including warming certain parts of the body.

His main customers are cats, followed by dogs, he says – and they are coming more and more often. According to Dr.

Contradictory trends

But instead of being a source of labor, pets in China now seem to be a kind of substitute for children. According to estimates, there are around 116 million cats and dogs living in China’s cities. And who is supposed to be happy?

In China, two opposing trends have been evident for years: in the more expensive cities, fewer and fewer couples can afford more than one child, despite rising living standards. The birth rate has been falling noticeably, even though the Communist Party abolished the decades-long one-child policy in 2015. It currently stands at around one child per woman.

Costs of raising children are high

This year, China’s Yuwa Institute for Population Research found that the cost of raising a child in China is among the highest in the world. The experts look at the year 2022 and base their results on the expenditure on a child compared to the alleged gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

On average, it costs 538,000 yuan (currently around 68,400 euros) to raise a child until they reach 18. This is 6.3 times the Chinese GDP per capita. It was only more expensive in South Korea, which ranks at the bottom of the world in terms of births per woman.

In contrast, more and more people in China have pets. Dr. Hu suspects that this is also due to high work pressure. “People need emotional comfort, so many decide to keep a pet, regardless of whether they have children or not,” he says. In a country with around 1.4 billion inhabitants, such a trend creates enormous business potential.

Pet boom also a danger

However, the pet trend has also been criticized. The animal rights organization Peta Asia praises the concern for dogs in China. However, they criticize the conditions in which some dog breeders produce inbred litters and keep the animals in small cages while street dogs fight for their survival. Peta promotes taking animals from shelters instead of buying them from breeders or pet shops.

In the future, the pet business is likely to remain promising: In July, an analysis by the US investment bank Goldman Sachs concluded that the market for pet food in China could be worth the equivalent of 63 billion yuan (currently around 8 billion euros) by the end of the decade.

Much more explosive: From the data, the analysts calculated that by 2030 there could be more pets than children under the age of four living in China’s cities – and that this could quickly increase to a ratio of two to one. It was said that the younger generation in particular would keep pets.

Dog wedding cake

In Beijing’s chic center, where young people like to stroll between the expensive fashion stores, Li Te sells customized cakes for four-legged friends. Occasions such as animal birthdays or dog weddings are reportedly becoming increasingly popular in China.

Customers can send a photo of their pet to Li’s shop via cell phone, and the animal is then modeled onto the cake. With fresh ingredients such as fish and meat, the likelihood of the four-legged friends having to give up a piece to their owners is slim.

“Customers are keeping more and more cats,” Li noted. She is therefore receiving many orders for International Children’s Day on June 1. dpa