1.9K
CHHave we been looking at Panda-nomics all wrong? 🐼📉
We’re told that pandas are a symbol of global conservation and friendship. But if you look at them closer, they look more like a sovereign lease agreement. Since 1984, the Gift Era of pandas is over. Now, every panda on Canadian soil (or anywhere else) comes with a $1,000,000 annual price tag and a baby tax on any cubs born abroad. Even the $16 million renovation at the Calgary Zoo was essentially for a tenant that could be evicted at any time. I break down the full business case for the world’s most expensive gift on Youtube.
In 2013, when Er Shun and Da Mao landed in Toronto, they were greeted by the Prime Minister as envoys of friendship, but the gap between the cute bears we see and the reality or the contract is the result of a pivot made in 1948. China stopped gifting pandas and starting leasing them. Canada signed a massive “Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreemen (FIPA) and over 20 commercial deals worth billions of dollars. The pandas? They were the soft power seal on a hard-edged trade deal involving the nation’s uranium, agriculture, and energy.
Watch the in-depth conversation on @cheungate (Link in bio).
#panda #geopolitics #canadachina #systemexposed #pandadiplomacy
@cheungateyt
