Not only is Panda Diplomacy doing little for cross-strait relations, it now seems that there is some Panda Diplomacy backlash on the Sino-American front.:

Zoos in the United States have told China they cannot afford to keep paying $1 million (£580,000) each year for the loan of Giant Pandas. [...] Washington National Zoo spokesman John Gibbons told the BBC: "There is a possibility that there may be a day when there may not be Giant Pandas at the zoo.

"We have had informal discussions with the Chinese and told them that we can’t sustain the current expenditure and we are waiting for a response."

The Washington zoo was the birthplace of "panda diplomacy" in the 1970s when the Chinese Government donated two pandas amid efforts to improve Sino-US relations.[BBC]

It’s not so much the panda as all the other items in the contract… like those the bottomless bowls of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed.

D.C. Panda pic from the Flat Stanley Project.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, northeast asia, pandas, taiwan

Peter Dorsman at Peaktalk notes a proposal from the China’s legislative advisory body, the CPPCC, for a change to the nation’s banknotes that AsiaPundit would welcome.:

At the moment I am reading Mao : The Unknown Story which even after all that we’ve learned about communism and its depraved despots still is a revealing read. The question is how many copies have made it into mainland China and to what extent it will influence a rethink of the Chairman. Well, he may no longer find himself on Chinese banknotes:

Delegates to an advisory body to China’s parliament have proposed that Deng Xiaoping, architect of the nation’s economic reforms, and Sun Yat-sen, father of the revolution that toppled the last emperor in 1911, should grace the new bills, state media reported on Monday.

It may be a small gesture, but it is a siginificant move in the ongoing process of China rewriting its own history.

While AP is in agreement that the addition of Deng and Sun to the country’s banknotes would be good news, he doesn’t really see the proposal as one of great significance.

But more on that in a moment.

On Peter’s other question, AsiaPundit offers his assurances that there are absolutely no copies of the Chang-Halliday book in China.

And if there were they would certainly not be brought to the Great Hall of the People to be read by journalists ahead of boring press conferences.:

And the book would definitely not be brought anywhere near the Forbidden City.:

There is simply no way to get a copy of such a book in China.

Back to the currency matter. Unfortunately, the proposal on the new notes isn’t a proposal that is imminently likely to pass. Jeremy at Danwei notes some other CPPCC pitches that were made.:

• “Urban Shower” proposal: Promote the construction of low-cost bathhouses in cities to serve the people.
• “CCTV Anchor” proposal: Swap the current Evening News anchors, who are getting along in years, with younger, fresher faces.
• “Official Weight” proposal: To cut down on government officials wasting public money on lavish banquets, create an Administrative Ethical Code that includes a weight limit for public servants.
• “Peasant TV” proposal: Zhao Benshan thinks that the current national rural TV channel is not enough to satisfy the entertainment needs of China’s non-urban population.
• “College Admission” proposal: Sure, there’s good reason to reform the college entrance exam system. But Yin Hongfu has very specific suggestions: 60-70% from the exam, 20% from social service, 5-10% from creativity (which under special circumstances - champions, inventors, and such - may weigh as much as 50%).
• “Child Actor” proposal: Ban children from acting in commercials.
• “Beauty Economy” proposal: Regulate beauty contests to limit the value society places on outward appearance.

See also gay marriage, the one child policy and edible toothpicks.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, economy, northeast asia, money, puppy

AsiaPundit is noticing much oddness with China’s Great Firewall right now. Google seems blocked in
Shanghai but remains accessible in Beijing and Xiamen.

Even stranger, unproxied access is currently possible for two strictly forbidden FLG sites (http://www.ninecommentaries.com/ and http://english.epochtimes.com).
Are any other China users experincing either problems with Google sites or finding other weirdness, such as blocks being mysteriosuly lifted or imposed?

(Update: Unabrewer says the two FLG sites and the BBC are available in Haining.)

(Upperdate: GZ Expat says yes to Google but no to the FLG in Guangzhou. And Fons has noted that he had been seeing a change in the way blocks are implemented - with access being denied at the municipal Shanghai level rather than nationally.)

(Uppestdate: AsiaPundit is more puzzled by the accesibility of the FLG sites than the inaccessibility of Google in Shanghai. He can’t think of any reason for the former. The crackdown is still policy.

However perhaps the Google outage is due to an excessively large number of people using the search engine today to find nude Chinese wedding photos.)