Local officials prevent festival fight over dogs

The annual litchi and dog meat festival, a commercial activity on the day of summer solstice promoted by local restaurants in Yulin in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, met tremendous opposition from the animal rights activists, who claim eating dog meat is a bad custom and urge the local authority to ban the festival, which was started in the 1990s. The local government, however, says it has no legal foundation to interfere with the commercial activity. Comments:

It is good to see that the confrontation between dog meat eaters and dog lovers in Yulin this year is more rational than in previous years. They have chosen to communicate with each other, rather than physically confront or verbally abuse each other in the street. That the dog meat festival has evolved from a farce to a serious drama shows conflicts between different values are unavoidable, and people need to make some compromises to create an atmosphere conducive to reaching an agreement.

China Youth Daily, June 24