Real Talk!

A drunken Chinese tourist bit a 6-year-old Panda, named Gu Gu, at the Beijing Zoo yesterday. Apparently, he was just biting it back. Zhang Xinyan said that he had only wanted to cuddle the sleeping Panda but roused it from sleep, causing a scuffle.

Pandas are such a symbol of the People's Republic of China that pro-Beijing Americans are called "panda-huggers" by their critics. In March of 2005, there was pandamania when China offered Taiwan a cuddly pair of Giant Pandas. The Pandas went through a stringent vetting process, judged by cuteness, psychological compatibility and genetic composition to help ensure that they'll mate and have attractive, healthy offspring.

Turns out that the one-year-olds earmarked included a male offspring from the Pandas that American President Nixon received when he visited the communist country in 1972. Taiwan, dubbed “Chinese America”, reacted with cynicism- seeing the gift as a Trojan horse of sorts. The media saw the gesture as a charming effort to trick Taiwan into trading away its freedom.

Tensions between Taiwan and China began in 1949, when Communists (led by Chairman Mao) took control of the mainland. In 1950 U.S. President, Harry Truman, ordered a fleet of ships into the Taiwan Strait to defend possible Chinese attacks on the island. Over the years, politic changes have caused issues of independence to flair and subside.

Beijing has found that its proposed unification on the basis of 'one country two systems' has increasingly less appeal to people in Taiwan. As a consequence, some believe that Beijing has used coercive tactics to prevent separation.

Now, the gifting of Pandas (sometimes referred to as “Panda Diplomacy”) dates back to the Tang Dynasty (624-705 AD), when the Chinese Empress gave a pair of pandas to Japan’s Emperor as a goodwill gesture.

While Pandas spend most of their lives asleep, they are known to bite and to be extremely inept at sex. But in the realm of diplomacy, giant pandas have few rivals. The pandas' role in the recent dispute was not merely symbolic. On the contrary, accepting the pandas as a gift could be interpreted as accepting Beijing's claim that Taiwan belongs to mainland China.

According to the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Beijing can make an outright gift of pandas to any zoo it likes within China. Foreign zoos are different: they can get the animals only on loan, in the form of a scientific exchange.

The Chinese argue that Pandas symbolize peace and friendship and the gesture has had nothing to do with politics. Skeptics see the animals as a perfect symbol for Beijing as no matter how friendly they look, watch out for their claws. Perhaps Pandas are being trained for combat?

Maybe Mr. Xinyan could shed a little light on that possibility?