'Goodwill' pandas leave China for Taiwan

A pair of pandas left China today on a long-awaited goodwill journey to their new home in Taiwan, in the latest move symbolising the warming ties between the two countries.

State television carried live coverage of “Tuan Tuan” and “Yuan Yuan” being carefully loaded onto a special charter flight, and the plane gently lifting off from the Chengdu airport in Sichuan province for three-hour flight to Taiwan.

The cage holding the four-year-olds had pictures of pandas painted on it, and similar pictures were on the headrests and walls inside the EVA Air 747.

“I wish them a happy life in Taiwan,” the official Xinhua News Agency quoted tearful Ya’an panda keeper Qu Chunmao as saying before the two left.

Beijing first offered the pandas to Taiwan in 2005 hoping they would strengthen Taiwanese public support for reuniting with the mainland, an offer rejected by the island’s former leaders who supported independence for the self-governed island. Current Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou has tried to nurture closer ties with the mainland and accepted the pandas as a goodwill gesture.

More than 500 security guards and armed police kept watch at the airport as the pandas arrived for their historic trip. The tight security underscores enduring political tension between China and

Taiwan, with the self-ruled island’s opposition warning that the pandas may be a communist propaganda ploy.

When linked, “Tuan Tuan” and “Yuan Yuan” mean “reunion” in Chinese.

Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949, and China has repeatedly warned that any Taiwanese moves to formalise its de facto independence could be met with war.