Found guilty by who?
Wealthy smugglers getting rid of the poor competition
That's basically it... Indeed, China imports legally masses and masses of plants and animals from the wild ( quoted as 'W' in the CITES trade database) for traditional medicine. The ones arrested are most likely the smaller traders and resellers...
The number seems to be really bogus indeed, because if 100.000 police officers had to perform such raid, all the traders around China would have been warned well in advance. Most traders stay alive by some arrangement with some people to remain politically correct... They have shops on the main streets, open to the public, and everything in their front window, it is not a 'hidden mafia' indeed.
this is the strangest new...
I agree with Lance & Savier remarks.. The name of the street is Hight street (sounds englishky...is this in Hongkong?)
-Does the Mainland government tries to show who is the boss to remind the Hongkong peoples they are really just exist by the grace of the central government?
-100,000 cops..where did you find that many, and would they create their own bottle neck & could not advance an inch per hour over the raid? probably more than the amount of soldiers they used in Tian An Men square massacre.
-7,000 stores with wild animal , did China try to manipulate number in order to get in the GUINESS BOOK of record?
That number, for technical reasons, is absolutely impossible to believe, or if indeed such a number had been involved, they would have found nothing, and even less...
7000 stores wild wild animals, I think the number would be more than a couple dozen thousands. Every 'pharmacy' and 'traditional medecine shop' is selling illegal wildlife. One of the highest prized and life saving medicine in China, Taiwan, and more Asian countries is An Kung Nihuan Wang, a pill that cure cancer, stops stroke, heart attack. It is made from the rhinoceros horn, antimony, elemental mercury, jewel orchids, a fraction of a stone found in the galbladder of the porcupine ( the stone itself is found in one out of some hundreds animals, costs 'pure' over 35000USD), and for the 'gold standard one' has even pieces of the brain of the shatoosh ( Pantholops... highly protected animal), all mixed together.
Nearly all any high rank officer, government people, or even higher, that would not have some pills with him, and their families each has one or two with them in case of any 'problems....
-If they really want to do it, they just have to station the cops at the borders of Vietnam, Laos, Burma etc... and don't tell me the top dogs (won't ingest these precious medicinal ingredients to keep themselves in good shapes in order to serve the peoples)
Honestly, they tried, but the borders are huge... and there are some hundreds ways to pass from one country to the other, through the mountains, forests, rivers, cities...
Now again, most of the medicinal trade made of wild animals is legal, even for the rhinoceros or elephant...
If the conservationist and wildlife lovers love such news, I don't at all, because from my experience, it means nothing, is nothing, and will be forever nothing.
Once the people will understand that from 'legal' to 'illegal' is just a matter of people, that the wildlife is collected at the same rate every day, week, month and year, and that basically we are all going through an extinction of most known wildlife, without any recourse or option within the next centuries, everything will be fine. We have to accept it, but between deforestation, 'legal harvesting' for various purposes, with legal permits, through laundered plants and animals, and the heaps of consumers that will not stop, there is absolutely no choice...
On a last remark, if you are dying of a very rare, very aggressive cancer, you are ready to hope for everything, even the WWF president I am sure. If someone tells him, you die in 6 months, but maybe with rhinoceros horn you will survive, he will try, if he has the money. That's another clear thing, and the crooks play on the survival instinct.
