Taiwan embraces China's gift of 2 pandas

"China presented the 4-year-old pandas to mark warming ties between the mainland and the island, which split amid civil war in 1949, although opposition politicians and other Taiwanese skeptics have denounced the gift as propaganda. China named the animals Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, which together means "reunion.""

I thought this was interesting news considering how we have been discussing in POLS 495 about how China is upset with Taiwan because of their split from the mainland in addition to their different political ideals. This seems to indicate that there is a bit of ease in the tensions between the 2. In Chapter 1 of Shirk, Shirk discusses the difficult position the United States would be put in if an incident were to occur between China and Taiwan. Hopefully with steps like this taken towards peace between China and Taiwan, we won't ever be presented with that type of situation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090126/ap_on_re_as/as_taiwan_china_pandas;_ylt=AgSZs2BHFtkN_KxBlycmBoIBxg8F