NEWSWEEK: China Wants to Give Pair of Giant Pandas to Taiwan as Goodwill Gesture; Taiwan President Sees Veiled Gesture to Assert Claim Over The Island

NEW YORK, March 26 /PRNewswire/ -- While Beijing officials are trying to give two giant pandas to Taiwan as a goodwill gesture, Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian is urging his government to say no, believing it is another attempt by the Chinese to assert their claim over the island, Newsweek reports in the current issue. Beijing is hoping the pair, Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, whose names echo the Mandarin word for "reunion": tuanyuan, can help resolve the 56- year armed standoff between mainland China and Taiwan, report Beijing Bureau Chief Melinda Liu and Hong Kong Bureau Chief George Wehrfritz in the April 3 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 27).

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060326/NYSU002 )

For more than a thousand years, China's rulers have used the coveted beasts to win allies abroad. But the pandas' role in this dispute is not merely symbolic, Newsweek reports. On the contrary, accepting the pandas as a gift could be tantamount to 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. Nevertheless, Beijing insists that the pandas would be "a goodwill gift" to Taiwan, "free and unconditional." "It's a very clever gesture," says Lo Chih-Cheng, head of a Taipei think tank. "If we accept them, it will trigger a domino effect."

Meanwhile, Beijing has been waging a charm offensive, cutting duties on goods from Taiwan and inviting Chen's leading political adversaries to visit the mainland. Mainland officials say that Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, which the press has dubbed "Trojan pandas," are nothing more than a continuation of that policy. "It's absolutely inappropriate to call them 'Trojan pandas'," says Zhang Hemin, director of the Wolong Giant Panda Research and Conservation Center in Sichuan province, where the cubs were born and raised. His deputy, Li Desheng, agrees: "Pandas symbolize peace and friendship. This has nothing to do with politics."

In an e-mailed letter last week, Chen urged the Beijing leadership to let the pair stay home in the mountains of Sichuan, not locked up in a zoo. "Pandas brought up in cages or given as gifts will not be happy," Chen said. However, polls say more than 65 percent of the Taiwan population is in favor of accepting the mainland's offer. The Taipei Zoo is building a $6 million climate-controlled "five star" panda enclosure and the private Zoological Society of Taipei has spent more than $100,000 to train zoo staff on the care and feeding of pandas.

(Read article at www.Newsweek.com. Click "Pressroom" for news releases.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12018348/site/newsweek/ SOURCE Newsweek