Exploring affective ethics and moral actions in the grassroots animal movement in China

The suspected origin of zoonotic diseases in the now infamous wet-markets of China, along with the high-profile protests against the yearly Yulin dog meat festival have brought animal-human relations in China into the spotlight. However, relations between people and animals in China have been a changing and crucial issue for some time. A growing population and wealth in the post-Mao era has resulted in one of the highest meat consumption quotas in the world, and the importation of high-intensity farming techniques, often as they are being phased out in the countries of origin (Park & Singer 2012). Whilst people move away from the source of meat production and into the cities, the middle class has grown concurrently with an increase in pet ownership. These changes have been accompanied by a recent rapid increase in animal activism, initially focusing on environmental issues but increasing focusing on companion animals and relations to animals more widely (Li 2006). Critics of the movement have tried to dismiss it as an import from the West, whilst supporters have attempted to trace it back to traditional Confucian or Taoist conceptions of nature, or Buddhist ideas of compassion (Fiskesjo 2017). Whilst some scholars have proposed instead that activism and social movements are examples of the formation of new ethical ways of being, where actors break from pre-existing moralities and norms to exert what could be termed a form of freedom, creating new personal ethics (Dave 2012).