Category: Pandas for Taiwan

From Monday's China Post:

Ma's position is unfortunately untenable.  Pandas are endangered species, and according to international law, cannot be given away as gifts FROM COUNTRY TO COUNTRY — they can only be loaned.

However, Taiwan did not accept the pandas as a LOAN from China.  Ma's government instead accepted them as a GIFT.

The only time international law allows this is when the endangered species are given away as gifts WITHIN A COUNTRY'S OWN DOMESTIC BORDERS.  Province-to-province, as it were.

So to recap:  President Ma accepted a GIFT of two pandas, which was advantageous to him because it allowed Taiwan to avoid paying astronomical $1 million a year panda loan payments to China.  But that gift came at a cost, because it could not be legally accepted under international law without admitting that the transfer was a domestic one.

Then to assuage voters, Ma the politician found it convenient to maintain the opposite.  The transfer wasn't domestic at all, because "the animals went through customs and into quarantine".

What logical contortions the poor man puts himself through in order to maintain his country's sovereignty . . . while destroying it at the same time.

UPDATE:  I would also like to direct the reader's attention to Article III (Sec. 3c) of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora:

An import permit shall only be granted when . . . [the government of the importing state] is satisfied that the specimen is
not to be used for primarily commercial purposes.

Of course, the loudest arguments in favor of Taiwan accepting the pandas were the commercial ones.  They'd be boffo box office at Taipei's Mucha Zoo.  They'd draw in over 6 million visitors.  They'd bring in foreign tourists.  Oh, and don't forget the merchandising . . .

By the way, how much of all that money, money, money will go towards panda conservation? 

Not one red copper New Taiwanese dollar.  Because they're gifts, not loans, remember?  Taiwan's on the no money down, no yearly fees program.  In contrast, at least 50% of the fees America pays to China for loaned pandas must be directed towards preserving the animals in their native habitat.

My point here isn't really that the wild cousins of Taiwan's new pandas are getting the short end of the bamboo shoot.  I'm simply saying that the importation of these creatures was illegal under international law, since it's clear they were brought into the country for "primarily commercial purposes".

UPDATE #2:  The American Fish and Wildlife Service has a number of requirements for reviewing panda importation applications.  One of these is that the application must include:

a bona fide scientific research proposal, i.e., one that is properly designed using scientific methods focusing on a specific topic, that advances and/or supplements the scientific knowledge of panda ecology, and that is specifically relevant to the expertise of the institution.

Now, we have been told that the Taipei Zoo will conduct research on their new arrivals.  But I AM curious:  Has the zoo submitted its research proposals?  Have these proposals been peer-reviewed?  Are they available for public criticism?  And if not, why not?

Oh yes, and one final thing.  Does the zoo have "a plan to ensure that the public display of pandas will not interfere with the research activities"?

Or would such a plan interfere too greatly with the animals' primary function of income generation?

From today's Taipei Times:

"To reunite".  Wow.  Almost as subtle as Spain sending a couple of Iberian lynxes (collectively named "Columbus rocks") to Bolivia.

An analysis piece at the Times describes the game that's afoot:

Years ago, I had an online exchange on another blog with a disagreeable Aussie leftist on the subject of Taiwan.  The details have been lost to the ether and my own fading memory, but part of his argument was that Taiwan is part of China (China says it's so, so it must be true!).  And because it's a domestic affair, other countries should just butt out.

I find myself thinking more about that conversation lately.  Because I think if we were to have that same conversation now, he would find himself heavily armed with Beijing's arguments.  Taiwan accepts pandas from China on the basis of DOMESTIC transfers.  Check.  Taiwan accepts flights from China as DOMESTIC in origin.  Check.  And last, but not least, Taiwan now publicly refers to itself as a REGION of China.

How would I respond to my interlocutor now, I wonder?

Welcome, little Tuan-tuan and Yuan-yuan.  Willkommen kleiner Ans und Chluss.

POSTSCRIPT:  All of my posts on the pandas may be found here.

As part of his Peace-Through-Powerlessness policy, President Ma Ying-jeou on Thursday reduced the frequency of Taiwan's military live-fire exercises, so they'll now be held biannually biennially instead of annually.

Give the government points for creativity, however.  They're not reducing Taiwan's military readiness to ingratiate themselves with the Butchers of Beijing.  Why heavens, no.  They're doing it because all that analysis stuff is just too darn hard:

The military will stage its major war games every other year instead of holding them annually, Minister of National Defense Chen Chao-min (陳肇敏) said yesterday morning.

“Because the cycle of the live-fire Han Kuang Exercises is too short, making it difficult for the military to have adequate time to correct and adjust shortcomings found in each drill, we have decided to hold the series of drills every other year instead of annually,” Chen told a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.  [emphasis added]

Fortunately for Western civilization, the planners of Operation Overlord weren't quite so dilatory after live-fire exercises in anticipation of the Normandy landings were conducted at the end of April '44.

Had Eisenhower and Montgomery followed the KMT's standard, D-Day might still have happened — sometime in 1946.

As it was, the military planners of D-Day instead put their noses to the grindstone, figured out what went wrong during Exercise Tiger, and launched the invasion.  And they did all that not in two year's time, but in ONE MONTH'S.

It's an unfair comparison, really.  Because the allies in 1944 were serious about their nations' defense, while the KMT of 2008 is most assuredly not.

POSTSCRIPT:  The runner-up for this week's award would have to be the reason floated for not renaming a couple of Chinese pandas, which will soon arrive in Taiwan.  (Their names, when spoken together, sound like the Chinese word for "Unification").  From Tuesday's Taipei Times:

A more likely explanation is that Beijing has communicated that VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN if the pandas are ever given new names.  But instead hearing the truth, Taiwanese are treated to cock and bull excuses that these animals have some sort of "right" to the names Beijing's propagandists cynically attached to them.

Which reminds me of my mother's dog.  The one I've dubbed, over my mother's objections, "Stinky".

A cruel animal abuser I must be.  But it's a funny thing:  Whenever I call him that, he never gets QUITE SO CONFUSED OR OFFENDED as to turn down the the dog biscuits I give him . . .