A brief history of international hunting in China

China's first international hunting area was established in 1984, and the largest and most active area, Dulan in Qinghai, was begun in 1985. Hunting areas in Gansu began in the late 1980s, according to Richard Harris, a conservation professor from the United States.

"Between 1985 and 2000, international hunters legally took 412 blue sheep, 158 Tibetan gazelles, 12 red deer, 10 white-lipped deer, and five argali in Dulan, and there is no indication that this general pattern has changed during 2000-2006," he wrote in a 2008 research report.

Things changed in 2006, when an advertisement about auctioning the limited permits for international hunting of wild animals was published in a newspaper in Chengdu, Sichuan province, in August. Previously, not everyone in the public could hunt. The ad was paid for by an auction company entrusted by the State Forestry Administration.