Pandas: President Barack Obama

Beijing Dept: More recently, pandas have been used as part of an effort to court Taiwan, the island Beijing considers a breakaway province. The symbolism of being sent two pandas in 2008 was confusing for some Taiwanese since the bears while wildly popular with tourists are not known for being especially affectionate toward each other. Pandas are considered an endangered species in large part because they re chronically uninterested in mating , according to Globe and Mail. It s a prospect that the Chinese leadership welcomes, one that has made it easy to forget the acrimony of Mr. Harper s early days in office, when he aggravated Beijing by awarding honorary citizenship to the Dalai Lama and boycotting the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games. Panda diplomacy has been used to symbolize China s desire for better ties with foreign powers since the seventh century, when the Tang Dynasty sent a pair of the bamboo-munching bears to Japan. The warm-and-fuzzy tactic was revived by the Communist Party leadership in recent decades, most famously when Mao Zedong gifted Richard Nixon with a pair of pandas for the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. President s breakthrough trip to China in 1972. The expected decision to send pandas to Canada comes as ties between Ottawa and Beijing warm rapidly, particularly on the trade front, where Mr. Harper is expected to embrace China as an alternative market for Canadian energy following U.S. President Barack Obama s decision to delay approval for the Keystone XL pipeline that would have shipped Alberta bitumen south. Now it may go west instead via the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to the West Coast. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.