Lu: Panda Offer should Be Rejected

Annette Lu, Taiwan's vice-president and longtime independence and democracy leader, said in an interview yesterday for the pro-Blue United Daily News that the offer of pandas from China should be rejected.

In an interview with the Chinese-language United Daily News, Lu said Taiwan should turn away the pair of one-year-old pandas that China has recently selected as a gift to give to Taiwan.

"The pandas are the modern version of Wang Chao-chun (王昭君)," Lu said, referring to the famous beauty who was offered as a concubine to the king of the Huns by Emperor Yuan in China's Han dynasty (about 100 A.D.)

The story of the righteous concubine exists in several versions. Basically, she refuses to portray herself as more beautiful than she actually is. I expect that Lu's meaning was that pandas have a similar function: to portray China as more beautiful than it really is. This point was also made in a widely circulated letter from a local mainlander intellectual who supports annexing the island to China. She wrote (thanks to ESWN for the translation):

What I really want to say, Mr. Jintao, is that as a Taiwan person, I don't care if Tuantuan and Yuanyuan come to Taipei or not, even though the panda bears are so lovely as to make people melt. But a Taiwan person like myself cares about the status of Freezing Point, just like many many Hong Kong persons care about the status of the arrested reporter Ching Cheong. If the "value self-identification" of China is interpreted and executed by a bunch of slave servants holding whips, canes and keys and if independent character and the spirit of freedom are attacked, disciplined and monitored, please ask just where is the starting point for us to talk about unification? There are conditions behind my emotions for China. There are many others who deeply love the earth of China without condition, but what can you offer them to talk about unification such that they won't be scorned and cursed by others?

Similarly, the Taipei Times cleverly juxtaposed Lu's remarks on the pandas with a pointer to the problems of the increasing restraints on speech in China:

Meanwhile, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Vice Chairman Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said yesterday that the Chinese government should remove its bans and censorship measures as soon as possible. Liu made the remarks at the council's weekly press conference.

The MAC released a table which listed the different measures the Chinese authorities have taken in the past three years to regulate the media.

"Freedom of speech is a universal right. We wish the Chinese government would not continue violating it," Liu said.

He said that the government is greatly concerned about China's anti-democratic measures, as they block the Chinese people from accessing diverse information and stop them from expressing themselves freely.

Many abroad have wondered why the pandas have generated such a controversy in Taiwan. The issue is actually quite simple: imagine if you lived next door to a gangster who beat his children and forbade them to talk to outsiders, fired shots into your yard, repeatedly threated to murder you, insisted that your property is his because his grandfather once claimed it, prevented you from participating in local community life by influence and intimidation of others in the community -- all in order to force you to give up your house to him. Then, in the midst of all this, still insisting that you have no right to your own life, one day he offers you flowers....

UPDATE: Rank has been blogging on the pandas here and here.

[Taiwan] [China] [pandas] [Annette Lu]