Before China can fulfill its promise to deliver two giant pandas to Taiwan, officials from Beijing and Taipei will have to sit down and discuss the practical implications, such as whether the animals will be able to survive in Taiwan, the Cabinet said yesterday.
"It is just not as easy as they [Chinese officials] have said," Cabinet Spokesman Cho Jung-tai (
Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Cho said that the giant panda is a protected and endangered species, and Taiwan will have to make sure it is capable of taking care of the animals before accepting the gift.
He said Beijing's offer to send the pandas to Taiwan had a political motive.
"They [Chinese officials] made it sound like the offer only concerns the two sides of the Strait and that nobody is allowed to interfere. They feel they can do as they please, because they do not regard us as a foreign country. However, what concerns us more is whether the pandas can survive in Taiwan," Cho said.
He said that he would propose a meeting between the two governments to discuss the issue and invite experts to work out practical details.
"Pandas have a right to survive as well. Taiwan values the spirit of the right to survive [as a nation], so we should spend more time to make sure the species can live in our environment before we welcome them," he said.
China has meanwhile started a selection process to find two suitable pandas.
Beijing is looking for pandas between 18 months and four years old, the State Forestry Administration said.
China will also try to engage Taiwanese in finding names for the animals.
"We will solicit names for them -- their infant names from the mainland people and their formal names from the Taiwan people," Xinhua quoted administration spokesman Cao Qingyao as saying.
According to the Mainland Affairs Council, the Chinese government has tried to give pandas to Taiwan three times since 1992, but the offer was turned down each time, as evaluations by local experts have shown that current facilities and manpower in Taiwan are not capable of accommodating giant pandas.
Apart from environmental concerns, the financial implications of taking care of giant pandas will be another issue for Taiwan.
According to an evaluation by the Taipei City Zoo, it will cost around NT$53.4 million (US$1.7 million) per year to take care of a single panda.
This includes a US$1 million donation to the giant panda preservation fund in China.
The annual budget for the Taipei City Zoo is NT$400 million.
The Chinese government has been using the popular animalss since 1950 as part of a "panda diplomacy" approach. It has given away 25 pandas to nine countries and Hong Kong.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the
RSS