When did the South China Tiger become Endangered?

The South China tiger became endangered in the second half of the 20th century. Its collapse began in the early 1950s, when government campaigns treated tigers as pests, and it sped up after 1958 with mass hunting and the clearing of forests during the Great Leap Forward. Close to 4,000 of these tigers lived in China before 1950; by the end of the 1990s only about thirty were thought to remain. The IUCN has listed the subspecies as critically endangered since 1996, and today it is considered possibly extinct in the wild, surviving only in captivity.

A tiger found only in China

The South China tiger once lived across south-central and eastern China, the only country in its range. That makes it a truly Chinese tiger, and it is easy to see why it holds such a strong place in the country's art and beliefs. If you would like to know more about that side of its story, our article on the tiger in the Chinese zodiac is a good companion to this one.

Up close, the South China tiger has a few telling features. Its stripes are finer and more numerous than those of other tigers, and its coat is lighter and more orange. Its skull also differs, with shorter carnassials and molars than the Bengal tiger. It is smaller than the Siberian and Bengal tigers, yet larger than the island tigers: males weigh 130 to 175 kg (about 287 to 386 lb) and measure 2.30 to 2.65 m (about 7.5 to 8.7 ft) in length.

How the decline began in the 1950s

Very little is known about the life of the South China tiger in the 19th century. It seems the animal was known mostly to local villagers, which suggests it lived largely undisturbed in its home forests.

That changed in the early 1950s, when large government "anti-pest" campaigns made the tiger a target. In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward, a sweeping push for industry and farming. It brought uncontrolled hunts and massive deforestation, and the tiger became an enemy to be wiped out rather than an animal to live alongside.

The numbers tell the story plainly. There were nearly 4,000 South China tigers before 1950, and only about thirty at the end of the 1990s. In less than fifty years, a tiger that had roamed a large part of China was pushed to the very edge, which is why it came to be classified as critically endangered.

Is the South China tiger still in the wild?

Probably not. In the early 2000s, researchers surveyed its former territory to look for the tigers themselves or, failing that, for any trace that could help estimate their numbers. They covered about 290 km (180 miles) of mountain trails in eight reserves, ran infrared cameras in two of them and studied every sign they could find. They found no evidence at all, not even a footprint, that a single South China tiger was still alive there.

A few years later, a Chinese farmer shared photos of what he said was a wild South China tiger, and for a while the news raised real hope. In June 2008, Shaanxi officials declared the photos fake: the farmer had photographed a tiger picture from an old poster, and he was later convicted of fraud. The animal in the pictures also looked strangely like a Bengal tiger.

Chinese authorities have not confirmed any wild sighting since. Even if a few tigers do survive somewhere in the mountains, there would be far too few of them to rebuild a population on their own.

The story of this tiger is one we like to keep in mind, and our Chinese tiger pocket watch was made in its honor.

You can see the full design on the Chinese tiger pocket watch page.

Saving the species in captivity

Between 1958 and 1970, Chinese authorities captured six wild South China tigers, and every captive tiger alive today descends from them. Their descendants live in several zoos across the country, and there were more than 240 of them in 2022. Few of these animals are purebred, however, because many have been crossed with other subspecies over the years.

A growing captive population keeps the lineage alive, but it raises a hard question. Tigers raised in zoos quickly lose the hunting skills they would need to feed themselves in the wild. Captive breeding was a necessary step, yet on its own it cannot bring back the hunter this tiger once was. That is why people began to look for ways to return the species to a wild setting.

Learning to hunt again in South Africa

The most ambitious effort came from the organization Save China's Tigers. In 2002, it signed an agreement with China's State Forestry Administration and acquired land for a reserve in South Africa, where young South China tigers could gradually learn to hunt on their own.

Why South Africa? The country has a rich and varied supply of prey, so the young tigers could find animals to stalk and catch. The first tigers arrived in 2003, and they did learn to hunt their own prey. They live in a fenced camp of about 1.8 square kilometers (about 0.7 square miles) inside the reserve.

The agreement also planned a pilot reserve in China to welcome the young of these tigers, but by 2013 no release site had been approved. Chinese authorities have talked about building new reserves on their territory, far from local communities, since around 2010, and as of 2025 no South China tiger had been released into the wild in China.

Where the South China tiger stands today

Put simply, the South China tiger became endangered between the 1950s and the 1990s, and it has been listed as critically endangered since 1996. The international scientific community considers it possibly extinct in the wild, its survival now depends on captive animals, and the plan to return them to Chinese forests has not yet moved forward. Three tiger subspecies have already disappeared, as our article on when the Javan tiger became extinct explains, and the South China tiger is at serious risk of following them.

Its image, though, is everywhere in Chinese art. You will find it in our Chinese style tiger statues set on rock and pine, and in the painted scenes of our tiger canvas collection. Our Chinese tiger cushion cover, pictured below, is another quiet way to keep this tiger's story in your home.