The Czech Republic is preparing to welcome a pair of pangolins from Taiwan next March, dealing a rare blow to China’s panda diplomacy by preferring the scaly anteater to the cuddly looking bear.
Keepers at Taipei Zoo have completed all the relevant paperwork for Guo Bao, a male, and Run Hou-tang, a female, to travel next year once Prague Zoo has completed the construction of their new home, according to the Central News Agency, the island’s official wire.
Zdenek Hrib, the mayor of Prague, confirmed the news on his Facebook page by posting pictures of the mammals, which are categorised as critically endangered in China by the Pangolin Crisis Fund.
“It is now clear that a breeding pair from Taipei Zoo will arrive in Prague in March,” Hrib wrote last month, noting the pair will be accommodated in the zoo’s “Indonesia jungle” area.
“Let’s hope that everything will go exactly as planned and I look forward to seeing the pangolins settling in,” he added.
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Prague Zoo had originally planned to build a panda house to accommodate one of China’s best-known endangered species but the plans came to a halt in 2019, when Prague’s city council repealed a sister-city agreement with Beijing over the “one-China” clause, which required the European city to formally acknowledge that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory.
The Czech city council argued that the clause was too political for such agreements.
The rejection infuriated Beijing and subsequently prevent any future prospect of receiving the bears through a loan programme.
At the time, the Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper run by the ruling Communist party, declared that residents in the Czech Republic who had long awaited the arrival of giant pandas were “extremely angry” by the mayor’s provocative act.
Hrib, who was once an exchange student in Taiwan, reportedly responded that human rights were more important than pandas.
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He then made a trip to Taipei in early 2019, with a proposal that the capital become a sister-city with Prague, but also surprised local officials with a request for a gift of pangolins.
Taipei, which has previously sent pangolins to only one European city, agreed.
After months of negotiations, in January 2020 the heads of the Taipei Zoo and the Prague Zoo signed a memo at the same time as the two cities signed a sister-city agreement.
Under the terms, the Taipei Zoo agreed to share all it knew about raising pangolins with Prague, while the European city promised to help Taipei to breed a herd of Mongolian wild horses, according to Central News Agency.
Unlike China’s panda diplomacy policy, in which the animals are loaned to foreign zoos for as much as $1 million a year, Taiwan charges nothing for its pangolins.
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Ko Wen-je, the mayor of Taipei, told the Wall Street Journal that the animals would be given as a no-strings expression of goodwill. “Maintaining friendship is more effective than wielding power,” he said.
Delivery of the animals and work on their new enclosure has been delayed by the pandemic, while zookeepers in Taiwan must travel with the animals as pangolins usually have a hard time adapting to a new environment.
Should Run Hou-tang and Guo Bao thrive it will be another diplomatic victory for Taiwan, which has been seeking more international recognition in the face of increasing efforts by Beijing to ostracise the island from the global community.
China has recently ratcheted up military pressure, and has yet to reject the use of force to annex the island and achieve “national unity” by 2050.
In response, Washington has stepped up its support for Taiwan.
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“The United States is going to take every action that we can take, from the point of view of both deterrence and diplomacy to ensure Taiwan will not be invaded,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said yesterday.
In China, state media reported that the country’s first Type 075 class amphibious assault ship was rapidly reaching its operational capacity after it passed an assessment focusing on “multi-dimensional landing combat that features the integration of sea, land and air units”.
The readiness of the vessel comes at a time “when deterrence is needed against ‘Taiwan independence forces”, the Global Times reported.
