China's leaders are convinced that animals pose a serious urban health risk and may have contributed to the outbreak of SARS - a deadly respiratory virus - in 2003.

Paranoia is so intense that six stray cats -including two pregnant females - were beaten to death with sticks by teachers at a Beijing kindergarten, who feared they might pass illnesses to the children.

Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.

But the crackdown on cats is seen by animal campaigners as just one of a number of extreme measures being taken by communist leaders to ensure that its capital appears clean, green and welcoming during the Olympics.

Taxi drivers have been made to attend lessons in how to greet passengers politely in English and a city-wide courtesy campaign has been launched to teach Beijing's notoriously dour and grumpy citizens how to smile and be pleasant to foreigners.

If they get rid of to many cats they're going to end up like Europe did in the middle ages. They got rid of the cats because of their fear of witchcraft and ended up with the plague.

The Communists are horrible. I feel so sorry for the Chinese citizens, their lives must be really dismal. You're
right about the "Black Death" as it was called in Medieval
times, the disease was spread by the fleas on rats. What
makes it all the more disgusting, is the fact that they send the cats to a "meat market" in Guangzhou. Chinese
serve dog and cat "dishes" in their local restaurants!

CAT HOLOCAUST IN CHINA
We already knew the Chinese government were a bunch of freedom denying, liberty hating, collectivist scumbag Communist sons of bitches. But it is still shocking to realize how deep their cruelty truly goes.

For years, the Chinese government turned a blind eye to the infanticide of female children – a direct result of the forced “one child per family” (OCPF) that the benighted savages in Beijing forced upon the populace. A sample of “scientific socialism” at work:

http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2008/03/09/cat-holocaust-in-china/

How ignorant can one nation be! The raw sewage they dispel in their own water supply will kill them before any cat. They deserve any plague that might befall them. Too bad the United States insists on holding the Olympics in China. When will we quit sending our money and jobs to such a sorry excuse of a country. They already have a one child policy so I guess a no cat policy is not a problem for them either.