Jah Ying is a user and market researcher, with 10 years of experience working with NGOs, social enterprises and startups across Asia and Europe. Her recent work focuses on the animal welfare and alternative protein industry in China, including a mixed methods study on Chinese consumer attitude towards alternative protein, qualitative analysis of animal advocates in China and authoring a chapter on China’s cultured meat industry. Previously, Jah Ying founded and sold a sponsorship platform serving students across the Asia Pacific and ran climate change campaigns in China.

Challenge and Change in China: Key Insights and Recommendations from a Thematic Analysis

When considering animal suffering from a global perspective, it is clear that current resources are disproportionately allocated to Western countries, yet production and consumption are on the rise elsewhere. In the aftermath of a pandemic originating in China, we have an opportunity to focus our attention on Chinese experiences with animal welfare, dietary change, and advocacy. In this talk, I will present findings from the first part of a two-stage qualitative study. This part involved interviews with Chinese farmed animal advocates about their experiences and perceptions of advocating in China—specifically focusing on the challenges of advocating for animal protection in China, relations between China and the West, the impact of COVID-19, and recommendations for other advocates. The interviews were coded and analysed with mixed deductive and inductive processes, presenting a picture of the current state of animal advocacy in China. In this presentation, I will discuss the key themes to emerge from the analysis, and present ecommendations based on them. These recommendations are intended for several different groups: Chinese animal advocates looking to learn from the experiences of their peers, Western advocacy groups hoping to expand operations into China, Western funders interested in supporting effective advocacy in China, and researchers wishing to build on what we have learned. The second part of this research program is currently underway but I will describe the hypotheses and deductive code categories. We are conducting interviews with members of the Chinese public to capture their perspectives on meat, veganism, and animal advocacy in a way that builds on the lessons learned from advocates in the first part of the research. As health and environmental disasters occur with increasing frequency worldwide, we can leverage research like this to inform our advocacy and effect change.