IN an echo of the days when Chairman Mao denounced his foes as “running dogs”, hundreds of angry pet owners confronted the police in Beijing yesterday in a protest against the regime’s new “one-dog policy”.

Eighteen people were arrested in noisy scuffles as about 500 dog owners gathered in a rare unauthorised demonstration near Beijing Zoo.

Several of the middle-class protesters wore badges that read “stop the killing” and waved furry stuffed toys in the hope of softening the hearts of the riot police and plain-clothes security men who surrounded them.

One complained that the pet-lovers’ protest was treated as if Beijing were under martial law. Police cordoned off the area, massed hundreds of reinforcements in nearby streets and tried to stop photography and filming.

In cities all over China, dog lovers have been outraged as police have swept through districts killing unlicensed dogs and confiscating others in a nationwide purge of the animals.

The aim is to rid the streets of strays and to fight rabies, which claimed 326 lives in China last month alone. It is the heavy-handed and arbitrary imposition of the rules which has the pet owners up in arms.

Yesterday’s protest was sparked by police raids on an area of luxury villas. According to the state news agency, Xinhua, the security forces discovered six “large unlicensed dogs” in the dragnet. It did not disclose their fate. Elsewhere, residents have reported seeing policemen beating dogs to death in the street.

Only dogs shorter than 14 inches are allowed. “Mastiffs, dobermans, saint bernards and great danes are banned,” Xinhua said, along with any dog considered “dangerous”.

Now dog owners in Beijing say they often have to sneak out at night to exercise their pets. The lack of green space in the capital, which resembles a gargantuan building site as it prepares for the 2008 Olympics, is also a problem.

For decades, pets were seen as a decadent, bourgeois indulgence, redolent of the days when the dowager empress kept a retinue of pekinese for her entertainment.

Most pets vanished during the cultural revolution, when revolutionaries sought to banish any symbols of private wealth or status.

With economic reform, dog-owning is becoming increasingly popular. According to official Chinese figures, there were 550,000 dogs registered in Beijing this year, up by 20% on a year earlier.

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