THE CHINESE PERCEPTION OF WILDLIFE - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 63

enclosing the areas, protecting them from incursions, or providing supplemental feed for
the animals within, hunting itself was strictly a royal prerogative. 33
More germane to our investigation here is that such royal hunting actually had little to
do with wildlife per se, and nothing to do with conservation of wildlife habitat. Certainly,
animals were required in order for there to be hunts, but the motivation for hunting and
maintaining hunting parks lay entirely with conceptions of the emperor's divine rights and
powers to control and order his empire and its people. By corralling, controlling, cultivating,
and ultimately subduing wild animals, Chinese rulers both trained themselves in the martial
arts necessary to maintain political control, and provided tangible (if symbolic) evidence of
their dominion. Schafer wrote that the uses of the hunting park in imperial China, “[a]side
from its meaning as a symbol of the perfection of Chinese control of nature, were the pro-
duction and carefully controlled cropping of live creatures for high ends—sacrifices to the
gods and the nurture of mankind.” 34
Hunting was seen as training for war, a way for the emperor to hone his skills of control
and management. 35 Sinologist Roel Sterckx, in his study of early Chinese attitudes toward
wildlife, has asserted that
The importance of the hunt and the hunting park had to do with symbolism rather
than economics. The seclusion of wild animals in a confined space such as a park
or a court garden, aside from availing the ruler with a sufficient supply of sacrificial
victims, was primarily an endeavor to sanctify the numinous powers of the ruler . . .
royal hunts and ritual killings of wild animals within such animal preserves describe
how game animals symbolically represented all species within the ruler's realm. 36
As intermediaries between divine spirits and common people, it was important that Chi-
nese rulers interact with both the natural and the supernatural. In short, concluded Sterckx,
“The ruler exerted his authority beyond his domestic realm by hunting wild animals.” 37 In
few historical accounts can one read of common Chinese peasants possessing the right, or
even the inclination, to hunt.
DISSENTING VIEWS
There remains a body of opinion in the West that holds that traditionally, if admittedly not
currently, Chinese views toward nature were primarily compassionate, and that Chinese
morality held wild animals in high regard. In dissent to what I have written thus far, this
view would hold that anthropocentric and utilitarian viewpoints arose later in Chinese
history, largely in response to contact from Western culture. If so, perhaps the rarity with
which most Chinese took up hunting reflected a moral view of the sanctity of animals
rather than a fear of retribution from their rulers.
Philosophical precepts of Buddhism, and more specifically of Daoism (which was uniquely
Chinese), are often considered to have had considerable penetration in the ancient Chinese
mind, leading to an imagined state of harmony between people and nature. 38 For example,
a coffee-table topic on China's wildlife by a team of British-based filmmakers concludes