Pandas - a gift from China to Taiwan?
Moving day could come soon for Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan - four-year-old giant pandas currently making a living sleeping and eating bamboo shoots in a reserve in central China.
China offered the two pandas to Taiwan in 2005 (a bit of panda diplomacy towards an island that China considers to be an inseparable part of its own country). But the authorities in Taiwan said no. They feared that accepting the pandas would also mean accepting China's position that Taiwan is a part of China. They also didn't like the fact that, when put together, the pandas' names spell the word "reunion" in Chinese. So the pandas stayed in China.
But in May this year, a new government took power in Taiwan - promising to improve relations with China. This promise appears to include accepting Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan.
China's State Council now says that keepers are getting ready to send the pandas to a zoo in Taiwan - and that the pandas will soon be able make their journey (no date has yet been given).
Whenever China wants to make friends, it likes to offer a panda (failing that, it organises a game of ping pong). Between 1958 and 1982, China sent 23 pandas to nine countries. After that, as capitalism took off in China, the country decided to start charging for the privilege. The country offered to rent out pandas to foreign zoos for fees of up to one million dollars a year (excluding upkeep costs.)
The authorities have made sure to consider the small print as well. If a loaned-out panda has a cub, that cub automatically becomes the property of China. So, as far as I can tell, this means that China owns all the pandas in the world (200 or so in captivity, together with around 1500 in the wild in central China).
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James:
it would be nice of China to gave the Pandas to Taiwan, as a good-will gesture gift.
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Pandas can not change the course of history, and reunite Taiwan with China. What is in the heads of these guys in Beijing when they name two sweet animals 'tuan tuan' (reunion) and 'yuan yuan' and send them over to Taiwan? This is the hollowness and almost childish mentality of 'image making' in this digital era of information and transparency. Instead of sending over two pandas, they should have sent two open-minded diplomats with a good proposal for reunification to Taiwan. Perhaps, they are not that mature and brave. Unfortunately, we may have to wait at least another decade before we may see such couragous and visionary leadership in Chinese politics. For the time being, we may have to give way to this kind of childish, unreflected and narrow nationalistic display of stupidity which many of us find it difficult to comprehend.
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The initial idea behind this rent a Panda scheme years ago was that it would help pay for Panda conservation work in China. But keeping Pandas is expensive for the zoos, and Pandas have lost the novelty value they had in the west in the 1970s, when the WWF launched the conservation program. To give credit where credit is due, the Chinese government`s conservation efforts have been genuine and quite effective.
Zoos are run as businesses too. Few things attracted the crowds like a Panda, (especially a newborn baby Panda). That`s why zoos wanted Pandas in the past. It was also about prestige, not many zoos have them. But Pandas may have now been replaced in the public imagination by Polar Bears. In recession people visit zoos less.
Panda numbers are still low, they are still endangered (illegal poaching for Chinese medicines and pelts remains in China, despite a death penalty) and it seems only captive breeding programs really increase population numbers. China has used Pandas as a diplomatic goodwill gesture ever since Nixon was presented with two in 1972. But the expense to zoos together with Panda fatigue on the part of the western public may mean such gifts are turned away. If western zoos do start turning away Pandas it`s only to be hoped that the Chinese govt. don`t downgrade the conservation work as having outlived its usefulness. From what I`ve seen on TV the Chinese public seem very fond of Pandas and as China is a booming economy hopefully Panda conservation will continue to be seen as being valuable in itself.
What do your Chinese readers think? Do you value your Pandas?
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Gift-exchange is essentially about reciprocity. It is embedded in all aspects of human life including economic, political and religious/moral activities.
Things for things; things for friendship; loyalty for benevolence...
When the gift is such a cute, lovely and unique mammal as panda, the reciprocal values increase and deepen.
The underlying principle is that there is no 'free gift' even under the terms of the lease.
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Why the "?" at the end of the headline?
Playing Sherlock?
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Good way to gouge the foreigners! Had it been the other way around, Chinese bloggers would have sent millions of hate messages calling capitalist-running dogs to be executed.
But, renting pandas is for a good cause, IF China uses the money to improve her environment. In that case, the West should rent more pandas from China, IF it is guaranteed to be the real thing and not pirated, faked or contaminated.
Go pandas!
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Oh my god, Taiwan strait issue again.
This blog will be very popular if both sides argue here.
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Hi:
i remember i was in china in the middle of name-making process.... normal civilians are invited to take part in, thinking of a good name...
i think Tuan Tuan Yuan Yuan are from two separate children...who think Tai Wan is a part of china...
thats all i remember
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Boy, you don't have mention that " an island that China considers to be an inseparable part of its own country" EVERY TIME when talking about Taiwan. It's kind of sick!
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All my students have to take a course titled the History of CCP.
And it is very clear that what the Nationalist Party achieved from the 2-time cooperation (and 3 rounds negotiations) with our party: they become the chieftains of Taiwan from the ruling party of then China.
Panda a good-will gesture? Hahaha, only history will tell ...
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There is a very important reason why all baby pandas born outside China have to return to China. At the age of 4 or 5, the baby matures. The only other pandas around are the parents. The male baby will mate with his mother while the female will mate with her father. The agreement of returning baby to China is accepted by all. This article sounds like that China has been playing SMALL PRINT tricks to keep the baby panda. What a cheap shot.
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I don't think "reunion" is a good translation for "Tuan Yuan", which sounds more like fimaly members gathering together for a dinner. At least the mojarity of Taiwaness and Chinese are ethnic Han.
I don't care whether Taiwan is a part of China or not as long as people from both sides can treat each other like brothers and sisters.
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At 1:09pm on 11 Sep 2008, jayfurneaux wrote:
“From what I`ve seen on TV the Chinese public seem very fond of Pandas and as China is a booming economy hopefully Panda conservation will continue to be seen as being valuable in itself.
What do your Chinese readers think? Do you value your Pandas?”
I’m from China and can confirm Chinese do value our Pandas. People were too poor to spare much money or thought on Panda conservation – it’s hard to think much else apart from finding your next meals when your stomach is empty. The average Chinese have now reached the point that they don’t have to worry about the absolute necessities so more things are beginning to appear on their minds: sports, culture, environment, wild life…
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Actually, the name "Tuan Tuan" and "Yuan Yuan" were voted for by TV audiences a couple of Chinese New Years ago. I remember watching the election amid the celebrations. They may possibly include some sort of political message, but I think it mostly has to do with the fact that "tuanyuan" (to reunite, as James said) is in the spirit of the New Year during which families gather together to celebrate. It's a rather warm and fuzzy word that describes people coming together and being content. I'm not going to deny that it certainly bears the implication that Taiwan and China should "reunite", but it's really a very gentle term generally applied to families and old friends. Maybe it's not politically correct for the Chinese to regard Taiwan as inherently part of China, and thus the use of "tuan yuan" is insensitive to many who do not want to "reunite" with China, but I think it was well-intentioned and a gesture of goodwill.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
"But the expense to zoos together with Panda fatigue on the part of the western public may mean such gifts are turned away. If western zoos do start turning away Pandas it`s only to be hoped that the Chinese govt. don`t downgrade the conservation work as having outlived its usefulness. "
Very good insight, Jayfurneaux!
China demands of the world that the DNA material of pandas (all pandas born outside of China) is wholely owned by China. I don't know of any other wildlife been declared as such. China has turned the pandas into commodity, to be traded and bargained and yet protected by pantent and copy right.
China's shrewd policy on making sure no other country will own a panda, even if the progeny is born out of the effort of the local zoo staff, and seeing the panda as a financial resource, is short sighted and may spell the demise of panda conservation in China.
I agree that at the moment polar bears are in imminent danger, therefore zoos and conservation organizations are doubling their efforts in keeping alive the specie. Besides, Canada, Russia, the Baltic States and U.S. had not made the polar bear a commodity. The world would be in big trouble if such magnificent animals go the way of dynasours. We should support the conservation efforts of these institutions whenever possible.
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Newborn_Khampa:
Obviously , you haven't got a sense of the chinese language and that's why you making yourself sound like a fool in front of anyone who knows chinese.
The two characters that combines and formes the phrase 'reunion' in chinese is 'tuan' 'yuan' .
And by calling someone by double the character is something very common in Chinese . Yuan, also means, round, circle, fattie.. etc and there are thousands and thousands of people having such a name. Tuan, which can have a meaning for - group, pack etc, is less popular for a name though.
It is not a childish way to call the pandas with these name, because as part of the chinese culture, names used to be having good meanings. For Hong Kong chinese people tough, it would rather sound a bit 'old fashioned'.
And talking about diplomatics, don't you think that they are already working on it. A group of taiwanese leaders were already VIP treated during the olympic ceremonies.
As a Hong Kong Chinese , where we are a neutral point viewing our 'mother' and the other brother relationship.. reunion will happen one day. but i'm afraid not within the next 15 years. I do wish it happen in my life.
China - over 5000yrs of history, seperated so many times, and it will reunion again when time comes. then it will seperate again, and united again.
Perhaps, after a couple decades, there will be a "United States of China " . knows..?
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Based on bloggers' comments in James's blog, I'd like to venture some generalisations.
The point is that the way people express their points of view depends on whom they are talking to.
1. When people come from different countries, they share the lowest level of intimacy, i.e. humanity, and tend to resort to such 'grand talks' as national political rhetorics where they are internalised.
Thus, James is often assumed as an representative of a percived mythical 'West', whose mission is to 'defeat' China, a percived sollid opponent of that 'West'----The reality is that there is no such thing as 'the West'. e.g. antagonistic feelings between Australians and Brits during the Olympics and Paralympics games; the European continental disgust for American cowboys...
In this blog, the 'international wars' often unravel at the quasi-offcial level. Some 'would-be Chinese politicians' are eager to defend their country against those 'haughty and complacent foreigners' who think they can see the sky of China from the inside of a shallow swell. And vice versa!
2. When people share the same nationality, they talk in less 'big' and more down-to-earth fashion. Perhaps nowhere is this more exemplary (or indeed a bit extreme, in my view) than in UK where people in power are constantly criticised, grilled and derided, see Nick Robinson's UK politics blog.
3. When pople come from the same family or more intimate contexts, they probably can remove most of the public masks and speak their mind in reality terms.
These are after all generalisations; many people with different national backgrounds can perfectly communicate with each other at the individual level.
Sadly, many of the bloggers here seem to have a propensity to wage a grand political war rather than to make efforts to facilitate cross-cultural understanding as real human beings.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
"tuan tuan yuan yuan " is not actually mean unify but the really acurate meannig is that one familly stay together. especially , in Chinese new year or other traditional fesitival, one family including parents , children or slibings should be "tuan yuan". "tuan yuan" is always beautiful whishes in Chinese culture.
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why taiwan do not want back? because taiwanese think they are richer and better than mainland. taiwan government of course do not want back, becuase if they back, they cannot be president and officials who have their own stage, many western people also do not want china unify, they wish china to be seperate in one day just like the way in Russia, to become several smaller states, and weaker and weaker.
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Panda's are awesome. 2 pandas doubly so. If they can nooky and get a third one, then it can only get better.
Of course China wants better relations with Taiwan. Whatever divides them politically, the people at least want contact and dialogue. Direct flights between the two had just started. That surely is a good thing.
The mainland may not respect soverignty for the Taiwanese, but they do not want to see it ruined either. Right now, little gestures like this are designed to foster communication- there's a lot more in common between the mainland and Taiwan than most people realise.
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Hey coolmaomao, it's reunion James wrote, not unify. And actually reunion is the correct English word for explaining the things you explained.
family reunion, between China mainland and Taiwan, right?
Your explanation was somewhat patronising in a wrong way.
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Quoting ch168,
There is a very important reason why all baby pandas born outside China have to return to China. At the age of 4 or 5, the baby matures. The only other pandas around are the parents. The male baby will mate with his mother while the female will mate with her father.
Oh no, this is bad. The pandas in China kept in the conservation institute will get all inbred in no time if what ch168 said is true. The world will have sickly pandas with very weak genetic variation and their long term survival will surely be in japardy.
Taiwan and China are all one of the same, except for the political leaders. It is really a family fight and so it should be settled with mutual economic, political and social benefits. Short of that, it is a big brother bullying a smaller sibling. By the same reasoning, Tibet is also in the same situation. With more freedom of religion and political autonomy, Tibet most probably will not object to being in the big family called China.
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Good gesture?...Hmm...tell u what ppl in Tianya think: why should we keep on feeding a dog that will never see us as master? Certainly they are not only talking about the pandas. We still think that THE ISLAND is ours (that means part of PRC), but about the ppl living on the island...less and less ppl in the mainland are buying the gov's we-are-all-Chinese (tong bao) rubbish.
Panda's popularity has hugely increased on TV and the internet after Sichuan earthquake. With effective management (only if), China would not have too big a problem in maintaining the conservation through incomes from tourism, various charitable foundations and helps from volunteers. Sending pandas abroad? I dont think it's nessesary in this (Taiwan) case. But it's not like commenting on this website is gonna change anything, certainly has less impact than posting on Tianya.
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Post #16 by democracy101: "China demands of the world that the DNA material of pandas (all pandas born outside of China) is wholely owned by China."
I would like to read more about this. Do you have any sources that you can refer us to?
I believe there are laws (at least in UK) that specify that a person has exclusive ownership of his or her own DNA. Also, DNA banks and research firms require authorization of release by a pet owner to use the pet's DNA. It would be interesting to see where the pandas fall and what the regulations are/should be.
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haha! Mr GonerCow, I refer you to Coolmaomao, you two can have a discussion on the translation since you both are presumably native speakers. You seem to be immersed in your literal translation of the words which implicitly indicate your weak or lack of knowledge in langauge and meaning. Most people know words can not always and entirely be understood by their literal translation, but rather there is something called contextual meaning....
Coolmaomao says, "tuan tuan yuan yuan " is not actually mean unify but the really acurate meannig is that one familly stay together¨
To be honest, I don't have the precious time to waste on your unchallenging comment, GonerCow, this much of a food for reflection should do for you
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I agree with comment #2 from Newborn_Khampa.
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China all claim mainland and Taiwan as one country.
To give Taiwan two pandas looks almost as if PRC is recognizing Taiwan as a separate country. And the two million USD fee seems to be a financial setup. Why would a Zoo in Beijing 'offer' a panda to Taipei for a fee, while Taipei has never asked? If Beijing Zoo tries the same thing to Shanghai Zoo, what would be the reaction in the Shanghai media?
There is no better description than 'childish' for the whole panda business.
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Tuan Yuan also reminds me of the chubby shapes of pandas.
I agree that there is political implication of the name. There is also the implication of the good-will from common people who want some symbolic meaning of reunion ... The meaning of the name has many layers, like many things, e.g. China has many characteristics and faces. The world is not black and white. We need to live with it. But I guess depends on who you are, you may choose to focus one meaning over the other.
So what if the majority of people in Taiwan do not want to be part of China? Should it be the business for the Taiwanese to decide not the mainland Chinese?
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Newborn_Khampa,
It is always amazing to me that how well the Chinese bloggers can use English much better than your management of Chinese. I can not agree more with you that their is always a context when you speak or translate sth. WHAT I CAN NOT UNDERSTAND is that why you are so confident that you understand this context better than your Chinese native speaker counterpart bloggers. Afterall '' Tuanyuan' is a very good and common word in Chinese. I will not be angry in any context if anybody said that to me.
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To discuss these two pandas, you have to consider the context under which they were initially offered to Taiwan. They were offered to Taiwan during DPP rule, right after high level KMT officials paid a visit to Beijing.
The DPP had been maintaining in official capacity that they were opened to friendly relationships and dialog with the Chinese government, while playing up the fact that the Chinese government would only talk to the Taiwanese government IF Taiwanese government agree with the One China principal - something which is seen as unreasonable to the Taiwanese people.
Well, here was the Chinese government making an unconditional gesture of goodwill toward Taiwan with the panda offer. But there was no way the DPP would have accepted the offer, since it was made after the KMT visits. It would have validated the KMT's effectiveness in Mainland relations, basically making the DPP look like a bunch of usurpers to power.
But turning down the panda offer - something that did not come attached with the usual precondition of acceptance of the One China principal - the DPP also showed itself to the Taiwanese public that it really was less opened to friendly relations and dialog than it tried to portray itself to be. It exposed the DPP's passive aggressiveness in inching Taiwan toward independence.
Basically the panda offer was a genius political chess move by the Chinese government. Personally, I applaud any use of "soft power" by the Chinese government. The next thing to do now, especially since the KMT is in power again, is to point those missles elsewhere and away from Taiwan.
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Newborn_Khampa,
everybody has the right to speak. i make some mistakes because my english is not so good and also sometimes very careless when i read. i appologize if anybody feel offence. I apprecciate those who tell me what mistakes i make, that's good for my improvement. those who think he is the most mature one, and always look down at others but never really give any valualbe suggestions to change anything needs to think how to improve himself first.
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coolmaomao,
You seem to be quite right at least this time when you say you read carelessly. My comment is not a criticism against your view, but instead it is directed towards GonerCow. Take it easy!!! nobody is taking away your right to speak like the government of China is doing of its own people, including the people of Tibet.
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Newborn_Khampa,
I am happy this time you can not help saying Tibet people are our own Chinese people. So let us mind our own internal affairs without outside interferring, Ok?
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Pandas are quite cute :-). I guess it is a good business to rent them out. After all, the price tag is only related to demand. As long as there are people willing to pay, China is happy to charge.
And as any commodity, they can also be given free of charge or at a discounted price for some "special" customers - think of food, oil, military aid etc.
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wzqings,
There you have got a 'catch', given your intense desire to hear that phrase, but when I said 'its own people', I mean people under the rule of this government, never said anything about its legitimacy. China, in the eyes of overwhelming majority of Tibetans, is nothing but a brutal occupier. If you think that will change by itself, then you are simply day-dreaming. Until and unless a fair reconcilatory settlement is achieved, the people of Tibet will not stop seeing China as an occupier and fight for justice and freedom.
I am too moderate by Tibetan standard when it comes to the question of Tibet. I am willing to stay within China if Tibetans can master the internal affairs of their own country while foreign and defence affairs are taken care of by the Central government. If the Chinese government officials really think that it is an internal affairs, then they would not spend so much money to spread propaganda about Tibet throughout the World, including the claim that it is an internal affairs, although the whole world knows that Tibet issue is not China's internal affair, but an issue of occupation and cultural genocide.
However, nobody knows it better than the Tibetans themselves. They know that the idea of Zhongguoren (Chinese) has never been their identity, but the identity of the people of their neighboring country, China, and whose government has mercilessly slaughtered hundreds and thousands of their fellow countrymen. And that Tibet and China were two separate countries until that brutal occupation, so on..
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"China demands of the world that the DNA material of pandas (all pandas born outside of China) is wholely owned by China.
Maybe western countries should demand that the goods they produce are owned by the producing countries then? Oh sorry they do but the Chinese still copy them. Maybe we should start cloning and selling Pandas then see how the Chinese feel?
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