Bamboo rats lifted Mao Zuqin out of poverty. Now, because of the coronavirus pandemic, poverty threatens again.

Mr. Mao has over the past five years built a viable farm in southern China with 1,100 bamboo rats, a delicacy in the region. But since February, when China suspended the sale and consumption of wildlife, he has had no way to cover his costs or his investments.

China has been lauded for suspending the wildlife trade, identified as the likely source of the outbreak. But the move has left millions of workers like Mr. Mao in the lurch. Their economic fate, along with major loopholes in the restrictions, threatens to undermine China’s pledge to impose a permanent ban.

China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, adjourned its annual session last month without adopting laws that would end the trade. Instead, it issued a directive to study the enforcement of current rules as it drafts legislation, a process that could take a year or more. The delay is raising fears that China may repeat the experience of the SARS epidemic in 2003, when the country banned sales of an animal linked to the outbreak — the palm civet — only to quietly let the decree lapse after the crisis peaked.

While directives from the Communist Party leadership are rarely challenged openly, a permanent ban has powerful constituencies and interests arrayed against it. And the government has already made exceptions for the use of wild animals for fur and traditional Chinese medicine, which the Communist Party authorities have actively promoted, including the use of bear bile as a treatment for Covid-19.

“The momentum is not favorable,” said Peter J. Li, an associate professor at the University of Houston-Downtown and a China policy adviser for the Humane Society International.

New York Times

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