In 1970s, China was in crisis; famine had killed over 36 million people.
The food production was not enough to provide for the population of 900 million people.
In 1978, the government, which was so far controlling food production, gave up control and allowed private farming.
The bigger companies dominated the production of popular items such as pork and poultry.
And to earn a living, small farmers began catching and selling whatever they got their hands on, including some wild animals.
It started on a small-scale with animals such as turtles.
Since this business was successful in feeding and sustaining people, the government encouraged it; the idea was to move people out of poverty and whatever achieved it was considered good.
In 1988, Chinese government enacted the Wildlife Protection Law, which designated wildlife as state resource and encouraged people to domesticate and breed wildlife animals for human benefit.
Small farmers began capturing and domesticating wild animals in big numbers.
When sold in wet-markets (markets where live animals are slaughtered for human consumption), these wild animals generated good profits.
Good profits meant more & different kinds of animals in domestication, thus leading to different kinds of viruses (also because the living conditions for these animals were not good).
The profit-attraction also led to smuggling of animals to wet-markets from other countries.
All these outbreaks are known to spread from wild animals because human bodies are not ready to handle such viruses.
After 2002 SARS, China banned wildlife farming when the virus was found to have traveled from a species of a wild cat.
But the ban was lifted a few months after the SARS came under control.
The wildlife farming industry is known to have strong lobbying capabilities, thus, explaining why it wasn’t banned permanently.
After Coronavirus outbreak, the wet-markets and wildlife farming have been banned again and the world is urging China to make the ban permanent this time.
