Dartblog

The number of living panda bears perennially dotes with the three figure mark, and for their scarcity and cuteness they are a matter of special pride in the far east. Their trade is heavily regulated, their births are controlled, their health scrutinized, and those yin-yang visages can not long stay removed from television camera. Right now there is a brouhaha stirring over a possible panda transfer.

Tucked away in the Wolong Nature Preserve, Communist China has a panda bear named Tuan Tuan. Roughly translated and joined with companion bear Yuan Yuan, that means, “Reunion Reunion.” And Communist China would very much like to gift Tuan Tuan to its divorcée Taiwan, which is a tiny democratic capitalist nation which exists only because of the very large America-shaped shadow it casts when the light is right.

China actually has several of these bears, as well as an appreciable public relations campaign behind its effort to give them to Taiwan. The putative goodwill donation of panda bears from a many-panda country to a few-panda country has been rejected by the Taiwanese government, over the clangs of a panda-hungry citizenry. Huang Shi-cho of the Taiwan Solidarity Union party is quoted in today’s Los Angeles Times as saying, “The pandas are a trick, just like the Trojan horse. Pandas are cute, but they are meant to destroy Taiwan’s psychological defenses.”

Taiwan may look pathetic and paranoid in rejecting the bears—Beijing is counting on that—but in this case, the estranged lover is right to refuse delivery on the FedEx envelope with yellow-legal-pad-love-note and custom-burned Isaac Hayes compact disc and egregious rosewater spray coating both.

Because Communist China, whose capacity for evil should never be underestimated, actually is offering a Trojan Horse: a legal one. As Julian Ku at Opinio Juris notes, the transfer of endangered species—and panadas are the most glamorously endangered of them all—is governed by the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. That is an international treaty to which China is party. It requires that the exportation of rare animals be supervised by a state-run permit office. China seems to have skirted this legal requirement so far, which is the rub. The Communists see the transfer of Tuan Tuan the Chinese Panda to Taiwan as we might regard the transfer of Jeff the American Panda from South Carolina to North Carolina: a purely domestic affair beyond the purview of international law.

In point of fact, China’s offer represents an international trade. If it can abuse cuteness, though—and it is doing so terribly effectively—it can push the deal through in ignorance of the 1973 treaty, thus creating a legal precedent of dealing consensually with Taipei on an intrastate basis. So the bears are, indeed, horses.

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Pictured: An adorable little Subversive Communist Instrument being given a bath.