City officials in the Chinese city of Jining have ordered mass executions of dogs within a 3-mile radius of where a rabies outbreak killed 16 people.

Rabies cases are on the rise in China, with 2,651 reported deaths from the disease in 2004, the last year for which data was available. Only 3 percent of the country's dogs are vaccinated against rabies.

Why can't China keep control of its dogs? Dogs are a big industry there, historically for food, and now as pets, with 2006 being the Year of the Dog.

China has a strict socialist style government, where everything is controlled by the government. Government does everything there so that people don't have to. Yet, they have a big problem with rabies outbreaks, and stray dogs running everywhere. Surprise! Surprise! We could've told them that government can't do anything efficiently.

By contrast, here in the United States, we're quite the opposite, with people having lots of freedom, much less police intervention, and yet, we don't have that problem.

The more I look at socialist style solutions, the more I shake my head in disbelief. In the USA, we grow up knowing that we have to take care of ourselves. In a "big government" society like China, people sit around waiting for government to do something.