A nine-member panel was?formally established
yesterday to decide which two giant pandas will be offered as gifts
to Taiwan.
Zhao Xuemin, vice minister of the State Forestry
Bureau, made the announcement at a ceremony at the Wolong
Nature Reserve in southwest China's Sichuan
Province, the country's largest panda center.
The panel of panda experts will be led by Zhang
Hemin, chief of Wolong's Administrative Bureau, who said it should
have comprised people from the mainland and Taiwan, but that the
island's authorities had not yet responded.
The mainland announced plans to send pandas to
Taiwan following the visit of Kuomintang Party Chairman Lien Chan
in May.
Zhao said people in Taiwan are eager to see the
pandas arrive, and Dai Xiaofeng, a senior official from the State
Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, quoted one opinion poll that said
over 70 percent welcomed the offer.
Dai said no deadline had been set for the decision
to be made, and that the panel would work at their own pace.
Chinataiwan.org quoted Hong Kong media as saying
next March had been speculated as the time the pandas might be sent
to Taiwan.
Set up in 1963, the Wolong Nature Reserve covers
2,000 square kilometers and pandas bred there account for 70
percent of those raised in captivity on the mainland, Zhao
said.
(China Daily August 10, 2005)