Annual Review of Capitulationist Raccoon Boost

A been in my yard loaded with morning glory pollen.

Every once in a while I review the awesome figures generated by the arrival of the Annexationist Herbivores at the Taipei Zoo. Last year I scribed:

Heh. It was four years ago this month that the Annexation Lardbombs exploded at the Taipei Zoo. They were delivered on Dec 23, 2008, and went on display a month later, to a brief flurry of absolute madness. Profoundly political and not the least bit a demonstration of goodwill, they were handled as a "domestic transfer" under CITES, one of the many quiet ways that the Ma government has capitulated to Beijing, as my round-up post above notes. They were named "Reunification" in Chinese. The Zoo's annual budget for them was over a million US$, and it wasted $10 million US on the enclosure for them, according to AP.

It's now been over five years. Meanwhile, let's once again review those promises from the heady days of late 2008.

Zoo officials expect the two giant pandas to attract more than 6 million visitors in the first year, saying they will issue numbered slips to visitors at the panda hall to prevent them from waiting in long lines.(TT)

Here's the data, through 2013. I can't find the 2014 visitor data on the zoo website in any language -- the 2013 data didn't come out until Dec of 2014 in English. Obviously, the visitor level is roughly what it was prior to the panda arrival, which means that these lolling lardbombs have done nada for overall zoo attendance. Indeed, attendance actually fell from 2009 levels over the next three years, bouncing back only in 2013. The Zoo is nowhere near the levels it was in the early 2000s, despite the tourism boosts. Just too much competition for the leisure dollar, I expect. But where are the 6 million visitors for the pandas? Somewhere back in the 1990s, perhaps...

UPDATE: Someone found the numbers for me. Looks like we got a 2014 kick for the baby lardbomb. Still nowhere near 6 million.

1999   4981102
2000   5794384
2001   5473487
2002   4147406
2003   2836936
2004   3054593
2005   3106296
2006   3460300
2007   3370091
2008   3284443
2009   3673564
2010   2808110
2011   2710720
2012   2722042
2013   3222668
2014   4,222,083
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Mayor Hau And Taipei City Government blow emergency funds on pro-annexation propaganda

In case you thought that display of 1600 pandas in front of the CKS Memorial/Democracy Square wasn't about politics, it was all about annexation propaganda. The Taipei government created the revolting propaganda set of stickers for LINE above back in Feb. They show a Formosan Black Bear and a panda cavorting together:

The local government’s Department of Information and Tourism squandered taxpayers’ “life savings” after it used money from the city’s emergency secondary reserve fund, which is earmarked for emergency relief, to release a set of eight LINE stickers featuring panda cub Yuan Zai (圓仔), Taipei City Councilor Ho Chih-wei (何志偉) of the Democratic Progressive Party said on Tuesday.

.....

The city government has taken about NT$3.33 million from the reserve fund to promote the pandas, NT$1.6 million of which went toward the sticker pack and NT$1.73 million for a 10-day outdoor art exhibition featuring 1,600 papier-mache giant pandas made by French artist Paulo Grangeon, the sources said.

The stickers are for the popular communications app LINE. A set of stickers put out by the city promoting love between the Formosan Black Bear (=Taiwan) and a panda (=bombastic expansionist power) are clearly intended as political propaganda.
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Pandas: Reviewing the Promises

Attendance at Taipei Zoo, 1999-2012. The pandas arrived in Dec of 2008. Figures for 2012 do not yet include Dec, which should add at least 225,000.

Heh. It was four years ago this month that the Annexation Lardbombs exploded at the Taipei Zoo. They were delivered on Dec 23, 2008, and went on display a month later, to a brief flurry of absolute madness. Profoundly political and not the least bit a demonstration of goodwill, they were handled as a "domestic transfer" under CITES, one of the many quiet ways that the Ma government has capitulated to Beijing, as my round-up post above notes. They were named "Reunification" in Chinese. The Zoo's annual budget for them was over a million US$, and it wasted $10 million US on the enclosure for them, according to AP.

Meanwhile, let's review those promises from the heady days of late 2008.

Zoo officials expect the two giant pandas to attract more than 6 million visitors in the first year, saying they will issue numbered slips to visitors at the panda hall to prevent them from waiting in long lines.(TT)

Six million! Zoiks! Meanwhile I wrote at the time:

Based on these previous crazes, there will undoubtedly be another craze for the pandas, simple creatures, the public will queue up in long lines for a short glimpse of the rotund bamboo chewing machines, leading commentators to write about how successful the Capitulationist Raccoons are.

But the fact is that such crazes, normal in Taiwanese life, have short half-lives, and this one will fade as it dawns even on the easily-led primate herds of Taipei that observing pandas is as unique and fun and interesting as watching granite erode.

Of course I was right, the whole thing was another one of those "we'll make money by subsidizing China" scams the pro-China crowd is so fond of. I wrote at the time:

It's a very Chinese gift somehow, that gets Taiwan to pay to starve its own resources for the sake of China. Indeed a perfect metaphor for Taiwan-China relations.  

If you eyeball the chart at the top, you can see that there is a bulge for the pandas but the general trend is flat and falling since 2002. Essentially officials were predicting a doubling of attendance thanks to the presence of two furred machines for turning bamboo into shit. The exact opposite actually happened.

How long did the craze last? Zoo attendance figures by month for 2008-10:

The major portion of panda-money'em lasted through May, with another small bump in the summer. After that, it was business as usual, with attendance figures in the excellent fall weather actually below those of the same time the previous year. The pandas are an expensive failure. I hope the next DPP president has the stones to send them back and spend the money on the popular Formosan Bears and other less political creatures.

REF: Information from the Zoo's 2012 quarterly report (4th quarter).
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