Washington, Feb 5 (DPA) Sometimes it just takes a panda to soften the tone between rival world powers.
After a series of terse exchanges between the US and China over Taiwan, Internet freedom, currencies, trade and the Dalai Lama, the US Thursday wished a safe trip to a popular Washington-born panda that boarded a plane for China.
Tai Shan, the first panda ever to grow up at Washington’s National Zoo, has been a star attraction since his birth in 2005. On Thursday he boarded a specially outfitted FedEx flight to China along with another young panda, Mei Lan, born at Zoo Atlanta.
US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley called Tai Shan “a tangible and furry manifestation of cooperation” between the two global rivals. The panda is returning to China under a long-standing, amicable agreement with a Chinese panda conservation programme.
Crowley noted that Tai Shan was a dual US-Chinese citizen, born on US soil of Chinese parents who arrived in Washington in 2000 under a 10-year agreement with China.
“He’ll always have a close link to the US and to school children across our country,” Crowley said.
Negotiations will begin in the spring to determine whether the parents will also be returned to China or remain longer in the US. Before that happens, zookeepers hope the pair will produce another cub after artificially inseminating the female panda with her
partner’s sperm last month.
