In China

Jul 12, 2007 08:01 GMT  ·  By

The growing power of the Internet has changed the destiny of over 800 cats which were to be skinned and served up as Chinese delicacies. 30 animal lovers rushed to a parking lot in Shanghai after reading an Internet posting by animal rights activist Huo Puyang signaling two trucks carrying cats in wooden boxes.

Huo's daughter-in-law stumbled into the trucks while searching for their missing pets. One of the trucks sped right away. She called Huo and her animal-loving friends then posted an Internet alert last Friday. The cats were to be delivered to the flourishing southern province of Guangdong, where many residents pride themselves with being able to eat anything that flies, crawls or swims.

"It was a cruel sight ... Pregnant cats and kittens were packed into the boxes. Many cats had died and smelled. Some were trampled to death. Others bit each other," Huo told Reuters.

Local police was alerted and the driver and the truck were taken to a police station, but there was no evidence that the 42 boxes held stolen pets and the police told the animal lovers to buy the cats. The driver asked for 14 yuan ($ 1.8) each. After hours of debate, the animal lovers paid over 10,000 yuan ($ 1.300) for 840 cats.

"We have a difficult task. The cost of feeding them pales compared to medical fees, vaccines and sterilization," Huo said.

She thought of donations and appealed to other animal lovers to adopt the cats, which were initially being cared for at her shelter.

This is another small victory of the Chinese citizens' efforts to use Internet and cell phone technologies to mobilize around often long-stifled grievances. A slavery story at brick kilns in the northern province of Shanxi was partly revealed as a result of an Internet campaign led by the fathers of missing children. The Maglev train project between Shanghai and nearby Hangzhou was reconsidered after petitions by thousands of residents.

The building of a chemical plant in the southeastern port city of Xiamen was stopped after thousands of protesters received cell phone text messages signaling the plant would be an environmental bomb, menacing the seaside environment. Internet censorship is commonly encountered in China, where the government uses an elaborate system of filters and tens of thousands of human monitors watching its 140 million Internet users' navigating behavior, clipping out forbidden content.