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Dog ownership in China rises to 150 million
Once banned as a bourgeois luxury, pet ownership is becoming big business in China with one in every nine Chinese now owning a dog, state press reported Monday.
Once banned as a bourgeois luxury, pet ownership is becoming big business in China with one in every nine Chinese now owning a dog, state press reported Monday.
China's growing dog population has reached 150 million, with experts predicting that the market for dog food and accessories could reach 6.0 billion yuan (725 million dollars) by 2008, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
They also predicted that the overall "pet economy" in China could reach 15 billion yuan annually.
An average Chinese city has about 100,000 dogs and gains about 10,000 per year, while large cities have up to twice as many, the report, citing statistics from the National Kennel Club of the China Animal Agriculture Association, said.
Beijing alone had more than 500,000 pet dogs in 2004.
Owners in Beijing spend more than 500 million yuan on their pets a year, while new pet shops in Shanghai are opening "almost every week," the report said.
A pure-bred, well-shaped dog can sell for as much as a million yuan, while the cheapest dogs cost just tens of yuan.
During the heyday of communist ethics, China banned pets as frivolous, arguing that the nation did not have enough food to feed its own people let alone pet animals.
China's 25 years of robust market economic reforms are not the only factor in the rising pet ownership, residents say. The nation's "one child" family planning policy aimed at limiting the growth of the population of 1.3 billion Chinese has also led many people to become pet owners as they seek company.
