Shenzhen has begun implanting free microchips in all dogs that have been registered in the city, announced by the urban management authority at this year’s “love your pet dog day” ceremony held Friday in Shenzhen Central Park, Futian District.

All dogs in Shenzhen need to be microchipped on top of registration required by the Municipal Urban Management and Law Enforcement Bureau last year. Otherwise, ownership will be treated as unlicensed, according to the city’s regulation on owning dogs.

The work is planning to be finished by the end of this year. At present, there are around 220,000 dogs, 90 percent of which were registered in the city, according to Feng Zengjun, deputy director of the Municipal Urban Management and Law Enforcement Bureau.

The microchip, which is only the size of a grain of rice, will be implanted by specialists or veterinarians into subcutaneous tissue in the dogs’ right side of the neck through a needle tube.

The microchips will be effective for 15 years after injection, which can cover a dog’s whole life. The injection takes only a few seconds and will not present any harm to the dog’s health, said a veterinarian.

There are only 15 numbers recorded on each microchip. Other information such as the dog’s owners and their contact numbers can only be read from the numbers recorded on the microchip through a system controlled by the authority.

The advantages of microchipping dogs include helping reunite owners with lost or stolen pets, effectively stopping citizens from dumping dogs and determining responsibility when disputes over dogs happen, said Feng.

“In the past, it is very difficult to decide the responsibilities in disputes over dogs. Now, with the microchip, it will be easier to decide the responsible. So we will mull relevant punishments by law,” said Hu Guiliang, deputy to the Municipal People’s Congress.