China stopped giving giant pandas in 1982. He wanted to protect his national emblem from extinction. But since the animal had become one of his most effective diplomatic weapons to make friends and close good business deals, he decided that he would continue distributing pairs of pandas around the world, but on a rental basis: short-term loans of 10 20 years, with a guaranteed return ticket home.
Hua Zui Ba and Bing Xing ended up in the Madrid Zoo in 2007, a gift from Beijing after a state visit by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. Veteran Spanish diplomats assure that it was a gesture of gratitude to Spain because the then Zapatero Government had supported the end of the European arms embargo on China, in force since the Tiananmen massacre.
The lease of these two friendly mammals (the male is 23 years old and the female is 21) ends this year. But China will not leave Spain, one of its “good friends” (said by Chinese officials) within the European Union, without pandas.. This week, the head of Chinese diplomacy, Wang Yi, promised that his country will send two more younger specimens to Madrid.
Who. Hua Zui Ba and Bing Xing arrived in 2007 as a gift from Beijing after a state visit by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. Because. It was a gesture of gratitude for supporting the end of the European arms embargo, but it was a loan for a few years. When. Now that the lease is up, China will send two more mammals following the visit this week of the head of Chinese diplomacy, Wang Yi.
Wang (70 years old), Foreign Minister of the second world power, has been taking a notorious walk through Spain this week, where President Xi Jinping's strong man in foreign policy has been feted and rolled out the red carpet.. This big shot from Beijing, a great juggler in the current delicate geopolitical games, was first received in Córdoba by his counterpart José Manuel Albares. But the main course awaited him in Madrid, with audiences in Zarzuela with King Felipe VI and in Moncloa with President Pedro Sánchez.
Beijing likes that Spain, despite having one of the largest trade deficits in the EU with the Asian giant, has not publicly joined the European trend that speaks of economic decoupling. Nor is it one of the countries that usually read the regime's primer on human rights issues.
The reception for Wang in style has fallen into favor in China, which is going to open some of its usual hermetic doors to more Spanish companies from different sectors, from cosmetics to wine. Although the gesture that has been made public has been the lifting of the embargo on beef of Spanish origin. For more than two decades, beef from the EU had not entered the Asian country due to the cases of “mad cow” disease.
But if the Chinese state press has highlighted something about Wang's trip, it has been Albares' commitment to maintaining “Spain's firm adherence to the one-China policy.”. These types of statements sting a lot in Taiwan, the island that functions de facto independent but whose sovereignty is recognized by only a dozen countries.
In Taipei, the first thing they remember when asking about their relations with Madrid is that Spain is the country in the world that has deported the most Taiwanese to China.. In statements to this newspaper by a senior Taiwanese official: “Spain has always been very unfriendly towards us. It is the country with which we have the least relations within the EU, the one that least sympathizes with our struggle. “The Spanish Government is pro-China.”