Giant panda gifted by China to Taiwan dies

A panda offered to Taiwan by China in 2008 died on Saturday of a prolonged illness, the Taipei Zoo announced.

Tuan Tuan was offered to Taiwan, along with his partner Yuan Yuan, as China’s good faith gesture, at a time of relative rapprochement between the two countries. Fourteen years later, and in a climate of increasing tension between China and Taiwan, the giant panda that, according to the BBC, had been suffering from seizures since August, died at the zoo.

Chinese veterinarians were called in to analyze Tuan Tuan’s state of health and the tests showed that the panda had ‘irreversible’ brain damagewhich greatly affected the quality of life of the animal.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, many took to social media to mourn and pay tribute to the panda. One of those people was Ko Wen-je, Governor of Taipeiwho took to Instagram to thank Tuan Tuan for “bringing happiness to the people of Taiwan and making the Taipei Zoo more wonderful.”

In 2008, when China offered Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, the gesture was seen as a positive development in relations with Taiwan, a territory whose independence that the Chinese do not recognize???????? In October, at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping stated that China “will never give up the use of force” to reunify Taiwan, a statement that left the world on high alert.

It is common for China to use pandas as a diplomatic tool to improve relations with other countries, however, it is expected that the pandas will be returned after a few years to be part of the Chinese breeding program, in order to protect the species. Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan are an exception, as they belong to Taiwan indefinitely, as do their two sons, Yuan Zaibap, born in 2013, and Yuan Bao, born in 2020.

Ironically, according to the BBC, the names Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan together aremeans “gathering” or “unity”????????