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In “Animal Abuse at a Chinese Theme Park” (Mainstream, Fall 1996), journalist Keith Lyons vividly described the atrocities at the Southwest Sun and Moon City located just outside the city of Chengdu in China’s Sichuan Province.

At this Disneyland-style park, animal fighting and feeding spectacles were staged for the mostly local clientele. Amphitheater seating for 2000 surrounded an enclosure where dog fights and cockfights to the death took place. Hired to install a water show at the park, American engineer Dave Usher saw shows where large dogs killed chickens, goats, and cows, and described how defanged lions slowly mauled cows, sheep, goats, and chickens to death: “It is a gruesome, earth shattering, noisy torture, often taking over an hour for the cow to stop shrieking and struggling.”

Actions by Usher, Lyons, API and others eventually ended the animal shows. At last report, animal fighting and feeding performances had not resumed at the Southwest Sun and Moon City.

Cruel and Grotesque

While staged animal performances may have ceased at Sun and Moon City, the concept of wild animal parks, complete with fighting and feeding shows, has spread to several other Chinese locations. During the past decade, entrepreneurs discovered that there’s money to be made in exhibiting animals. Foreign tourists and the resident merging middle class will pay to see animals on display and performing acts. And apparently the more cruel and grotesque the acts, the better.

“The competition for worst animal exhibit is fierce,” reports the Baltimore Sun of the Shenzhen Safari Park in southern China. “There is the sluggish tiger — probably sedated — which lies chained to a wooden table. Employees strike him with metal rods until he submits to being photographed with visitors. And there is the fetid, green pool where patrons pay about $2 to toss baby ducks into the jaws of Malaysian crocodiles.”

At the Beijing Badaling Wild Animal World, China’s newest theme park, calves and other animals are fed to a pride of lions in a circus-like arena. Tourists pay to see the performances which, according to an article in the South Africa Sun Times, are held every Saturday and Sunday. Park officials refer to the performances as “wildness training,” and justify the shows as preparing the captive-bred tigers for introduction to the wild.

Similar events are staged at other Chinese animal parks including the Bear and Tiger Village in Guilin, China. In October 1999, Jill Robinson of Animals Asia Foundation attended the park’s wild tiger show and saw young tigers attempting to kill a pig: “The pig was led out into the arena, before the keepers closed the gates behind him and left him looking bewildered as he faced the bars which separated him from the tigers enclosures. Two of the gates began to open and each of the tigers behind bounded across to the nervous animal. They appeared to be more interested in play, and began nipping at the pig’s legs, while he grew more frightened. The tigers become more excited and, although the pig squealed and circled many times to keep his more vulnerable sides away from the cats, it wasn’t long before they had brought him down. The pig began to defecate in fright and several large wounds were seen on his body while one tiger kept him pinned to the ground for several minutes by the throat. The pig was badly shocked and wounded, but still alive and staggering when the performance was brought to an end.”

While at the park, Robinson uncovered something even more disturbing. Her tour group was led to a classroom where a salesperson promoted the sale and consumption of bear and tiger bone wines, prized in traditional Asian culture for medicinal qualities. Robinson was told that by making a donation patrons could receive a bottle of wine, the size of the donation determining the size of the bottle. The salesperson explained that an export certificate would be supplied, “so that there would be no trouble taking it home.” Skeptical clients were led to another room and shown a tiger skull dangling on a cord in a covered urn.

The Loophole

Where are Chinese theme parks getting their animals? Some are bred at the parks themselves; others are imported. The Xiangjiang Safari Park in Pan Yu, southern China, took possession in October of 201 animals exported from South Africa. And in November, API discovered plans to transfer U.S. animals, including legally protected endangered species, to the very parks identified as participating in these offensive practices.

How could be allowed to happen? The U.S. Endangered Species Act prohibits the sale, import, and export of endangered species, except for “scientific purpose or to enhance the propagation or survival of the affected species.” This loophole allows commercial dealers to sell and export endangered species to foreign markets. The dealer must first obtain a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), documenting that the proposed commerce will benefit the species through captive breeding or conservation education. In addition, under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the applicant must demonstrate that the export is for conservation and not for primarily commercial purposes. Simple informational signs and written materials, however, usually suffice as evidence of education, even though the animal may be put on display and admission charged.

Between 1994 and late 1998 no requests were processed by the USFWS to export U.S. endangered species to Chinese animal parks. In the past 14 months, however, the USFWS has received seven permit applications to sell and export a total of 30 animals, 24 of them tigers, to China. All but one of the transactions are being brokered by the U.S.-based International Animal Exchange (IAE), a licensed animal dealer known for unloading excess U.S. zoo animals in countries such as Korea, Thailand, and Mexico where animal protection laws are weak or nonexistent.

Three applications submitted by the IAE request the export of animals to the Beijing Badaling Wild Animal World where the notorious “wildness training” occurs. Another application submitted by the Rare Feline Breeding Center of Center Hill, Florida, has requested the sale and export of four tigers to the “Jinan Zoological Gardens in Shandong Province, China.” In studying materials accompanying the application, API staff noted that the importing facility was identified by several names, one being “Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Village, Guilin, China,” the park where tigers are killed to produce tiger bone wine.

API has informed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of our belief that the importing facility and the facility charged with killing tigers are one and the same. In our official comment on the permit applications, API requested that the Service deny all export permits for endangered species to Chinese animal parks. To date, USFWS has not approved any of the recent applications, nor has it committed to rejecting them.

You Can Help

• Urge the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. to take necessary steps to end cruel practices in Chinese wild animal parks. Explain that spectacles of violence and cruelty to animals have no place in a civilized society and that such practices discourage you from visiting China or buying products made there.
   
  Write:

The Honorable Li Zhaoxing
Chinese Ambassador to the United States
Chinese Embassy
2300 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008
202-328-2500
fax 202-588-0032
webmaster@china-embassy.org

• Ask the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reject applications for the sale and export of endangered species to Chinese animal parks unless it can be determined that the transaction is for authentic conservation purposes.
   
  Write:

Office of Management Authority
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Room 700
Arlington, VA 22203
703-358-2104
fax 703-358-2281

• If you are planning a trip to China, please instruct your travel agent and tour operator that you do not wish to patronize any wild animal parks. Tell your friends to do the same.