Wildlife consumption in China was a necessity after the Communist Party took power in 1949, and famine became routine. Reforms encouraged rural farmers to breed wild species such as rats, bats and cats, to amplify the food supply. Live-animal markets are now an important economic sector with money at stake and politicians who protect those interests, sometimes legally, sometimes for bribes. Outside of big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, regional officials looking out for local interests often have more power than central government figures.

Traditional Chinese medicine is another huge factor, since it relies on hundreds of ingredients that come from wildlife, such as pangolin scales, bear bile, bat feces and rhinoceros horns. While not necessarily effective, TCM remedies are popular, and the $73 billion industry is politically powerful. “The Chinese pharmaceutical industry is a big source of job and income generation,” Felbab-Brown says. “The government is loath to touch it.” China even persuaded the World Health Organization to include TCM in its global guide to illnesses and treatments, lending an air of legitimacy to practices that for hundreds or thousands of years have depended on the slaughter of wildlife. And the new limits China placed on wildlife trade earlier this year don’t apply to TCM.