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The Taiwan side welcomes mainland experts to assist in the treatment of sick pandas, which is a rare opportunity for the two sides to contact each other.
The two experts arrived on Tuesday after Tuan Tuan, suspected of having a malignant brain tumor at the Taipei Zoo, deteriorated.
The giant panda and his partner Yuan Yuan were gifted to the zoo in 2008 when relations between China and Taiwan were torn apart by the 1949 civil war.
Ties have deteriorated since then, with Beijing cutting off contacts in 2016 following the election of independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen, who was re-elected in 2020.
Opinion polls often show Taiwanese rejecting China’s demands for political reunification, favoring a de facto independent status quo.
China sends pandas abroad as a gesture of goodwill, but takes ownership of the pandas and any cubs they produce. Native to southwestern China, these animals are the unofficial national mascots.
An MRI of Tuan showed that the lesions in his brain had expanded, indicating that the disease was “progressing rapidly,” the zoo said in a news release.
Experts Wu Honglin and Wei Ming have extensive experience in giant panda health and reproduction at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Base in Sichuan Province, China.
Pandas rarely breed in the wild and depend on bamboo for food, and remain one of the world’s most threatened species.
An estimated 1,800 giant pandas live in the wild and another 500 in zoos or reserves, mostly in Sichuan.
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