BEIJING — The Humane Society today said it will give China $100,000 to vaccinate dogs against rabies if it promises to immediately stop their mass slaughter in areas where humans have died from the disease.

The financial aid was offered to help set up a rabies control program in Jining, a city in the coastal province of Shandong, where officials last week killed thousands of dogs after 16 people died of rabies over an eight-month period.

"There are far better ways of addressing rabies control to promote the safety of your citizens, the good reputation of China and the welfare of dogs," Wayne Pacelle, president of The Humane Society of the United States, said in an open letter to China's ambassador in Washington.

Officials in Mouding, a county in the southern province of Yunnan, last month clubbed to death more than 50,000 dogs after rabies killed three people.

The killings provoked unusually pointed criticism in Chinese state media, while the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called for a boycott of Chinese products.

The official newspaper Legal Daily published an editorial calling the killings an "extraordinarily crude, cold-blooded and lazy way for the government to deal with epidemic disease."

The Humane Society said the money was conditional on China agreeing to stop the mass killing of dogs and accepting the group's help in establishing a nationwide rabies control program that relies on vaccinations.