Meet the Panda Dog

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The Chinese have surpassed us as the world’s biggest auto market, bested us at the renewable energy game, and are years ahead of us on high-speed rail technology.

Now they’ve beaten us to the “Panda Dog.”

There’s a new fad among Chinese pet owners that involves taking your domesticated canine to a grooming salon and having it washed, trimmed, and dyed to resemble an exotic animal. Think fluffy chow-chows as baby pandas and golden retrievers as mini-cheetahs or micro-tigers.

Photos currently making the rounds on the blogosphere include images from a dog pageant in China’s Henan Province. The dogs on display look confused and not particularly ecstatic.

This follows a rising trend in China that encourages extreme pampering of house pets, according to the Daily Mail:

Recent figures show money spent on pets across the nation has seen nearly a 500 per cent increase between 1999 and 2008—but, arguably, at the cost of their pets’ dignity. Quite what the animals might think about it is another matter.

Since Americans can potentially be fined hundreds of dollars for just coloring their dog’s feet pink, this seems, at least for now, to be a strictly Chinese market. Lucky them?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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