China is likely to bypass the international export treaty for endangered species and classify the export of the two giant pandas it wishes to give Taiwan as a domestic transfer, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said.
MAC Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said that on the export document for the two animals, they would be listed as being shipped from “Chengdu, Sichuan Province” to “Taipei, Taiwan.”
Liu said filling in the export documents in this way was common practice when Taiwan imports endangered species of wild herbs and animals from China.
PHOTO: CNA
MAC Chairperson Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) agreed, saying that she did not know how the names came about but “isn’t it nice that the name of Taiwan showed up” on the document.
“There are precedents to follow,” she said. “We just do whatever we are supposed to do.”
When asked why the council had declined to give a specific answer regarding the origin of export and destination of import, Lai said the media posed the question to the wrong agency as the Council of Agriculture (COA) was actually responsible for the matter.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) declined to comment on the title of the country on the import document, and said it would respect the Straits Exchange Foundation’s authority on the issue of the national title.
China promised to give Taiwan two giant pandas as gifts during former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan’s (連戰) trip to China in 2005.
Former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) government objected to importing the two animals because China considered the offer a “domestic transfer” between zoos, and therefore Taiwan would have admitted it was part of China if it had accepted the free gifts.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora stipulates that the transfer of endangered species between two countries must abide by the covenant.
However, the COA approved the import of the endangered animals shortly after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in May and chose Taipei Zoo to house them.
During Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit early last month, both sides announced that in addition to the two giant pandas, China would give Taiwan 17 Dove Tree saplings, a native plant in China known as “green panda,” in appreciation for Taiwanese assistance and hospitality after the Sichuan Earthquake in May.
In return, Taiwan would give Beijing one pair of Formosan sika deer and one pair of Formosan serow.
Meanwhile, Hau said yesterday that the city government expected the pandas to arrive in Taipei before Dec. 24, and that the public would be able to see the pandas in the zoo by the Lunar New Year holidays after a one-month quarantine period.
Taipei City Government spokesman Yang Hsiao-tung (羊曉東) will visit the Giant Panda Habitat in China’s Wolong Nature Reserve on Monday to discuss the transportation of the two pandas, Hau said.
“The arrival day and how the pandas will be transported will not be finalized until we reach a consensus on what’s best for the pandas with our Chinese counterparts,” Hau said yesterday during a media gathering at Taipei City Hall.
Two panda care technicians will leave for the reserve this morning to get more familiar with the animals.
Yang said he had contacted both China Airlines and Eva Air yesterday morning, and would select one of the two to fly the pandas to Taiwan.
Taipei Zoo director Jason Yeh (葉傑生) said the pandas would be transported under police escort to the zoo’s panda enclosure for a one-month quarantine.
The city government expects the pandas to draw an estimated 6 million visitors to Taipei Zoo in the first year.
The two pandas are named Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), which together mean “unification.”
Hau said the zoo had no plans to change the pandas’ names.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,