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The problem is, while many in China are at a 1st World level of income, the average Chinese citizen (which means a bigger population than the US or Europe) still is very poor, rural, and living at a subsistence level-- meaning struggling to not starve to death. "Animal rights" is a luxury invented by people who are safe, secure, and well fed, not people who have to live in the real world as it has been for most of human history. And the anthropomorphizing of animals is a cultural thing that isn't shared by all cultures. So by demanding that some other country with their own (deeply ancient) culture bend themselves to what outsiders tell them is how they should value animals and which animals they should be allowed to eat is not only naive, but smacks of racism. If millions of people in India got up a petition to tell Americans and Europeans to stop eating cows, we would at most laugh at it, and most likely ignore it. Just like China can (and should) for outsiders trying to tell them what they can eat.
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