TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Caring panda, loving panda
Panda diplomacy: The animals have historically been sent as gifts to other countries or leaders
Change Size
Panda diplomacy: The animals have historically been sent as gifts to other countries or leaders.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Those words, uttered by Mahatma Gandhi, have been inscribed on to a wooden signboard greeting visitors going through pathway at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in the northern suburb of Chengdu, China.
The base is a research and conservation center in China for pandas in particular - and shows how the country treats the bamboo-loving animal, long renowned as its iconic creature.
Established in 1987, the base used to host only six giant pandas, which are among the world's rarest and most-endangered animals.
After years of work and artificial insemination, the Chengdu Research Base currently hosts 136 giant pandas as well as other animals, such as 118 red pandas and numerous peacocks.
The base recorded that an average of 10 giant panda babies have been born every year, according to a researcher working at the base, Yang Kuixing.
'Since 2006, the birth rate has been increasing. As many as 96 new giant pandas were born from 2006 to date. This year, we are estimating to have six babies in this base,' Yang said.
Chengdu Research Base also noted that it has sent 11 giant pandas to five countries.
Since the old dynasties, giant pandas have had a significant role in diplomacy. The black-and-white animals were presented as diplomatic gifts to other countries or leaders abroad to strengthen friendship and cooperation.
However, in the early 1980s, China made a little change in its panda diplomacy practice: The beasts are now only loaned to outher nations. And cubs born during the loan period must be returned to China.
Releasing the animal from a conservation zone to its natural home in the wild is the next move.
Chengdu Research Base is working to be able to send the animals back to their natural habitat, the real place they should live.
'We are now training four pandas to be able to live in the wild. If we succeed, they will be the first artificially inseminated giant pandas to be sent and survive in the wild,' another expert, Huang Xiang Ming, said.
' JP/Raras Cahyafitri
