Protection or utilisation: revising the wildlife protection law

The Wildlife Protection Law (WPL) of the People’s Republic of China, adopted in 1989, was supposedly the country’s first national legislation for animal protection. Its adoption towards the end of the 1980s was not an accident. Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform set rural labour free, sanctioning production activities that peasants never could have dreamed of in the pre-reform era. The most entrepreneurial and audacious of this labour force ventured into wildlife farming. This new industry soon called for state policy support and regulation. The 1962 State Council Directive on the Reasonable Use and Protection of Wildlife Resources, an executive order to