A Man Said He’d Adopt Cats and Torture Them in a Livestream. Then Vigilantes Took Action.

In the chat group, anonymous users compared notes about how they tortured and killed cats for fun, sharing disturbing photos and videos of their abuse. Li, a man in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, bragged that he had butchered several cats that week and said he planned on adopting four cats and streaming their killing live that night.

Alerted to the man’s plan late last month, a group of animal rights activists took matters into their own hands and confronted Li at a shopping mall on Feb. 25 when he was about to adopt a kitten, according to an account of the event shared by a Beijing-based animal rights group and confirmed by police. In videos that went viral on Chinese social media last week, the man, cornered by the group of volunteers, was roughed up and repeatedly slapped himself in the face. He also confessed to abusing five cats, including pouring boiling water on them.

The case has sparked an online debate about vigilantism and animal abuse in China. While some condemned the activists for resorting to violence, many applauded them for stopping Li in the act and blamed the Chinese government for failing to protect animal welfare. “They gave him a taste of his own medicine. Fair enough,” read a top comment with over 12,000 likes on the platform Weibo.

So far, Chinese authorities have refrained from taking sides. In an official notice issued on Feb. 28, police in Suzhou’s Wuzhong district said they were investigating Li for allegedly killing adopted cats and sharing videos of the abuse, as well as the activists for allegeding detaining and beating Li. 

According to Companion Animals Working Group, a Beijing-based nonprofit, Li was part of a group on Chinese social media platform QQ, where dozens of users had gleefully shared videos of themselves torturing cats to death. Some were force fed acid, while others were thrown from heights or burnt alive.  

In its posts on the Chinese messaging platform WeChat, the nonprofit said it had received a tipoff about the group’s operation. The nonprofit also shared screenshots of conversations, where a user, allegedly Li, claimed he killed three to five cats per week and posted clips of injured, bleeding cats as evidence.

Animal welfare groups have limited options when they come across cases of animal abuse, Naomi Fu, a volunteer at the nonprofit, told VICE World News. “The first step of getting authorities to open a case is already challenging,” she said.

The nonprofit implored authorities to investigate and hold members of the QQ group accountable, and urged Tencent, the developer of QQ, to stamp out similar operations on the messaging platform. It also renewed calls for regulation and law enforcement to deter abuse.

“China still lacks a comprehensive and effective set of animal protection laws,” Suki Deng, director of the China Cat and Dog Welfare programme at Animals Asia, told VICE World News. “While some municipalities prohibit animal abuse in local regulations on dog management, they lack details and are not enforced effectively.”

Peter Li, an associate professor at the University of Houston-Downtown and a China policy specialist at the animal charity Humane Society International, said the attitude of authorities is also to blame. “Officials in general do not take animal cruelty seriously unless the act also directly impacts public health, public safety or economic interests,” Li said.

Meanwhile, activists have raised alarm over acts of animal cruelty across the country; instances in which even when caught red-handed, perpetrators were let off with only a slap on the wrist.

In 2020, a student at the Shandong University of Technology was caught brutalizing 80 stray cats and selling the videos online. He received psychological counseling and was kicked out by the school, but received no further punishment. In 2021, an investigation by the Chinese outlet Legal Daily found that behind these individual acts was a flourishing underground market, where abusers were paid for producing clips or livestreaming their acts.

More recently, eight cats were found dead—some strangled and some poisoned—on the campus of ShanghaiTech University in February. This has prompted students and faculty members to sign a joint petition urging school authorities to take the matter seriously and expel the student accused of killing the cats.

Some measures are on the cards as China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, meet in Beijing for their annual session this week. Zhao Wanping, a delegate and agricultural scientist, has proposed the introduction of animal cruelty laws, as well as a crackdown on the slaughter of dogs and cats and the sale and consumption of their meat across the country, citing how the illicit trade could be a public health risk. 

While China reclassified dogs as pets instead of livestock in 2020 in response to the pandemic, only some cities, such as Shenzhen and Zhuhai, outright banned the eating of dogs and cats. 

But it remains to be seen if Zhao’s proposals will be adopted. 

“The Chinese government has been hesitating to take legislative actions to outlaw animal cruelty largely because of economic concerns,” said Li, of Humane Society International, citing fears that costs of farm animal products could go up because of the need to improve conditions. “Some productions, such as foie gras and bear farming, would have to be shut down.” 

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