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Pandas put spotlight on China's economic boom
Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, June 27, 2007

HONG KONG -- Ten years after China took back control of Hong Kong, China's President Hu Jintao will jet into the former British colony for a massive fireworks and laser display July 1 to mark the anniversary of the end of British colonial rule in Asia.

But China's president can count on being upstaged by two other visitors from the Chinese mainland: Le Le and Ying Ying, two giant panda cubs who have also been brought to Hong Kong to mark what China's leaders consider an important anniversary signalling China's rise on the world's economic and political stage.

"We are expecting big lineups when the pandas are unveiled to the public on July 1st," said Christine Lau, a spokeswoman for Ocean Park, the Hong Kong amusement park that got its first two pandas a few years after the handover and now hopes to set up a breeding program.
A baby dressed as a panda rests on stage during a promotional event at a shopping mall in Hong Kong June 21, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty on July 1.
A baby dressed as a panda rests on stage during a promotional event at a shopping mall in Hong Kong June 21, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty on July 1.

"When we got our first two pandas, we did a million visitors in two months. It's going to be big."

Pandas are unquestionably big business -- the Chinese government now asks at least $1 million US a year from those who get a pair of giant pandas, which now number only about 1,500 in the bamboo forest of China and are often only loaned for 10-year periods.

Hong Kong's precious panda cubs, which have been kept in quarantine and are watched 24 hours a day by handlers as they feast on fresh bamboo shoots, will make their debut July 1 and will be on permanent display.

But just like Hong Kong's carefully orchestrated handover anniversary festivities, the panda pair are intended as far more than entertainment. Pandas are invested with a political purpose by the Chinese government, which has given away only a few dozen of the endangered species in the last few decades.

The rare gift to Hong Kong is seen as a sign that China is happy with the state of affairs in the former colony over the last 10 years and the attempt by the former colony's leaders to integrate into China and play down demands for democracy.

"The future looks bright," Allan Zeman, the Canadian businessman and Hong Kong resident who is chairman of Ocean Park, said when the amusement park took control of the pandas two months ago. "This is truly a gift from the heart of China. There will be closer relations between Hong Kong and China. Things are really changing."

China's panda diplomacy isn't new.

As far back as the Tang Dynasty (625-705 AD), China's Empress Wu Zetian sent a pair of the bears to the Japanese emperor as a token of friendship. Chairman Mao revived the practice, most famously by granting Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. after U.S. President Richard Nixon's ice-breaking visit to Beijing in 1972 to open Sino-U.S. relations.

While China's leaders see gifting pandas as a political tool to show unity and close relations, it can occasionally backfire on them.

Recently, for example, the Communist regime attempted to give a pair of pandas to Taiwan, which it hopes to bring back under China's control after it split from the mainland after the 1949 Communist revolution.

But Taiwan's leaders rejected Beijing's 2005 offer of Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, seeing it as an attempt to sway the island democracy's population towards unification with the non-democratic mainland. The words "tuanyuan," a play on the pandas' names, means reunion.

"We know the Chinese quite well, we should be cautious," Hsieh Huai-hui, a spokeswoman for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party told USA Today a few months ago after rejecting the pandas. "They send you a gift, but they want something from you."

No such rebuff is likely to come from Hong Kong, which is now a special administrative region of China and has a top leader who is appointed, not elected, and only a partially elected legislative council with limited powers.

The former colony does have a vibrant pro-democracy movement that will be holding a rally on July 1 to demand full democracy from the Chinese government, a protest that could attract hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong's seven million residents.

But China's President Hu has rejected the invitation to meet with the elected members of the legislature to discuss democracy's future.