China's Animal Protection Law 2026: Where It Stands

The most important thing to know about animal protection law in China in 2026 is not that a law passed. It is a timeline, and the timeline does not move in a straight line.

The short version

There is still no national anti-cruelty law in China, and no companion animal protection law. Neither appears in the 2026 annual legislative plans published by the NPC Standing Committee or the State Council on 11 May 2026. That is the most recent official position, and it is the low point.

But on 1 January 2026, the revised Public Security Administration Punishments Law took effect. Article 89 writes several animal-related situations into administrative penalties for the first time, with detention of up to ten days available. This is not animal welfare legislation. It is still a line that did not exist before.

At the local level, in March 2026 the city of Sanming published a draft regulation that used the term companion animal in a local rule for the first time anywhere in mainland China. It was taken down in late April, less than a month after it appeared.

Three points on one line. A new concept appeared. A new provision took effect. A new law did not appear in the plans. What follows is the sequence.

1 January 2026: the new public order law

The revised Public Security Administration Punishments Law was adopted by the 16th session of the 14th NPC Standing Committee on 27 June 2025. It runs to six chapters and 144 articles and took effect on 1 January 2026. The animal-related provisions sit in Article 89.

Article 89 covers four situations. Keeping an animal that disturbs other people's normal life draws a warning; failing to correct after the warning, or allowing an animal to intimidate others, draws a fine of up to 1,000 yuan. Selling or keeping a dangerous animal such as a fighting breed in violation of the rules draws a warning; failing to correct, or causing the animal to injure someone, draws detention of up to five days or a fine of up to 1,000 yuan; more serious cases draw detention of five to ten days. Failing to take safety measures that results in an animal injuring someone draws a fine of up to 1,000 yuan, or detention of five to ten days in more serious cases. Setting an animal on a person is punished under Article 51, which deals with assault and intentional injury.

The genuinely new part is in the last two categories. Dog bite disputes previously ran through civil compensation. There is now an administrative route, and it can end in detention. Treating the use of an animal to injure someone as intentional injury also amounts to recognising that an animal can be the instrument of an offense, which was previously unclear.

Its limits matter just as much

Everything Article 89 covers is about interference with people and danger to people. None of it is about harm to the animal. The text refers to disturbing other people's normal life, intimidating others, causing an animal to injure someone, and setting an animal on a person. Every one of the four situations lands on a human being.

There is a second point that is easy to misread. The words leash and dog walking do not appear anywhere in the law. Walking a dog without a leash can be penalised because it amounts to failing to take safety measures, but that consequence only triggers once the animal injures someone. The duty to use a leash comes from local dog-keeping regulations. The administrative penalty is the backstop for what happens when that duty is not met.

Keeping both points in view is what stops this law from being read as animal protection legislation. It is a social administration law. The animal provisions are about public order and physical safety.

27 March 2026: the Sanming draft

On 27 March 2026 the Sanming Municipal Justice Bureau, together with urban management, agriculture and rural affairs, and fire and rescue departments, published the Sanming Municipal Measures for the Protection and Management of Urban Companion Animals (draft for public comment). The comment period was set to close on 27 April.

On the public record of local legislation, this was the first local regulation anywhere in mainland China drafted around the concept of the companion animal. The definition sits in Article 3: dogs and cats kept routinely in a household for non-economic purposes such as companionship and emotional support. That definition is itself a position. It separates dogs and cats from both livestock and pets and gives them a third status.

The draft also contained several things that are uncommon in mainland regulations. No unit or individual may abuse or abandon a companion animal. Stray dogs are to be caught and sheltered by the urban management department. For stray cats the draft adopted a trap-neuter-vaccinate-return model, with release plans posted in the community for seven days and subject to a vote by residents. Parks and squares would be encouraged to set aside companion animal zones, and shopping centers, hotels and restaurants encouraged to admit companion animals.

Why it deserves its own section

Because it was not the embryo of a national law. It was a live test of how far a local government can go on its own.

Objections came quickly and clustered around three points: that the draft lacked a basis in higher-level law, that companion animals had no claim to special treatment, and that nobody had said who would pay for it. Lawyers noted that the existing Public Security Administration Punishments Law contains no penalty aimed specifically at animal abuse, which left the draft's anti-cruelty clause short of workable standards for evidence and enforcement.

Around 20 April, reporters from Red Star News called the Sanming Municipal Justice Bureau's legislative section several times and were told the consultation was still running and the channel was open. Around 23 April the draft came down from the official platform. By 24 April reporters found the links no longer worked. As of the published reporting, no reason has been given.

From publication to removal, a little over twenty days. The length is the information. An attempt to write companion animal into local law ran into a harder problem: with no matching concept or penalty in higher-level law, a local definition is only as useful as the provision it can be attached to.

11 May 2026: absent from both plans

On 11 May 2026 the NPC Standing Committee and the State Council each published their annual legislative plan for the year. Neither plan lists an anti-cruelty law. Neither lists a companion animal protection law.

To understand that absence, go back to a report dated 27 December 2025, when the 19th session of the 14th NPC Standing Committee adopted the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee's report on the review of deputies' bills.

Item 15 of that report concerns bills on enacting a companion animal protection and management law, submitted by Chen Wei, Zhao Wanping and 62 deputies in total, two bills, numbered 51 and 206. The bills argued that dog and cat keeping, stray animal disposal and related problems have become prominent, and that irresponsible animal keeping can create public order problems, and proposed a companion animal protection and management law.

The review opinion has two layers. The Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the National Forestry and Grassland Administration noted that the Public Security Administration Punishments Law adopted on 27 June 2025 already provides for dog bites and the keeping of dangerous breeds in violation of the rules, which helps resolve the problems the bills raised; that the existing Animal Husbandry Law, Wildlife Protection Law, Animal Epidemic Prevention Law and Regulations on the Administration of Laboratory Animals already contain relevant provisions; and that animal protection is closely tied to levels of economic and social development and to habits formed over long periods in some regions, so strengthening companion animal protection and management requires continued exploration in practice.

The Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee's conclusion was that enacting a companion animal protection and management law would serve both public health security and social stability, and recommended that relevant departments focus on implementing existing laws and regulations to resolve the concerns raised, while continuing to strengthen research and demonstration for dedicated legislation.

Continuing to strengthen research and demonstration for dedicated legislation. That phrase is the answer to where this sits. It is not a rejection. It is not a place in the plan either. The same report places the bills in the category of matters that may be considered first in relevant local legislation. The Sanming draft was one attempt at that route, and it has been taken down.

Nineteen years, and eight proposals

The line is long. On the public record, it was CPPCC member Han Wei who first called for an anti-cruelty law in 2006. NPC deputy Zhao Wanping has raised animal protection proposals every year since 2017, and by 2026 had done so eight times.

In November 2025, while the Ministry of Justice was collecting proposals for the 2026 legislative program, an online vote organized by members of the public passed 1.31 million. By the end of 2025 another vote passed 4.1 million. Those numbers measure the intensity of public feeling. Public feeling and legislative plans are two separate processes, and the first does not convert directly into the second.

On 14 January 2026 the Capital Animal Welfare Association held a full-day animal law forum in Beijing under the title Companion Animal Protection Legislation Cannot Wait. Those attending included legal scholars, lawyers and frontline advocates, along with Professor Amanda Whitfort of the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, who presented Hong Kong's experience with its Dogs and Cats Regulations, and Lee Sang-kyung of South Korea, who described how the 2024 Special Act on the Prohibition of Breeding, Slaughtering and Processing of Dogs for Food was enacted.

One line from the forum's conclusions is worth pulling out on its own: abuse and neglect of dogs and cats should be penalised regardless of whether the animal has an owner. That goes directly at the existing gap. Stray animals have no owner, and most substitute offenses, theft and criminal damage among them, require an owner or a provable property value. No owner means no victim, and no victim means no charge.

And the Wangwang case

Put the pieces together and the conclusion for Wangwang does not change.

The Jieyang case took place in 2026. Everyone involved was under 14. The two locks still sit on top of each other. There is no cruelty offense anywhere in national law, and even if there were, being under the age of criminal responsibility keeps the case out of court. Article 89 of the Public Security Administration Punishments Law deals with interference with people and public order. Where an animal is harmed but no person is injured, it does not apply.

The new local attempt does not change this either. Sanming's route was to establish the concept locally first, and that draft has been taken down. At national level, neither 2026 legislative plan contains the relevant law.

So the accurate statement is this. The 2026 progress in China installed a gate at the point where people and animals come into conflict. It did not install one at the point where people harm animals. Article 89 of the Public Security Administration Punishments Law is the first. The second is still empty.

Separating what happened from what did not

Read only the headlines and you can reach two opposite conclusions: China has started regulating, or China still regulates nothing. Both are wrong.

What has happened: since 1 January 2026, Article 89 of the Public Security Administration Punishments Law allows detention for people whose dogs injure others through rule-breaking keeping; the NPC used the phrase continuing to strengthen research and demonstration for dedicated legislation in its review opinion for the first time; and a local draft using the concept of the companion animal appeared for the first time.

What has not happened: there is no anti-cruelty law and no companion animal protection law, and neither 2026 legislative plan contains them; abuse of an unowned animal still has no corresponding offense; and the local attempt came down because higher-level law offered nothing to attach it to.

Setting the two columns side by side is more useful than a directional judgment, because it shows what kind of gap this is. It is not that nobody is pushing. It is that the pushing has reached the point where higher-level law has to supply the concept and the penalty before anything more can follow.

Back to Wangwang

Wangwang was a stray. She had no owner, which left her without an entry point on either the civil or the criminal route. That is part of why she became a landmark case.

Nothing that changed in 2026 supplies an answer for her. Article 89 will not apply to her, because she was not kept as an animal and did not injure anyone. The Sanming draft tried to give the companion animal a status, and that text is gone. Neither annual legislative plan contains a law written for her.

Legislative progress can be tracked. Dates, article numbers, review opinions, plan titles. All of it is public. Setting the timeline out clearly is one way of remembering her, and it is a way of making sure the next discussion starts from the record.