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China Watch: Chemical Espionage, Confucian Politics

A list of what the Wall Street Journal’s reporters in China are reading and watching online, periodically updated throughout the day. (NOTE: WSJ has not verified items in the ‘News’ section and does not vouch for their accuracy.) Last updated: 3:01 pm Beijing time.

News Items:

• A federal jury in the U.S. has convicted former Dow Chemical research scientist Wen Chyu Liu, 74, of stealing trade secrets and selling them to companies in China. (AFP)
• China is sending a pair of experts to Taiwan to help get a pair of pandas there in the mood for love. Taipei Zoo director Jason Yeh: “The experts from the mainland are noted for their rich experience in the breeding of pandas.” (AFP)

More after the jump.

Pandas Can Stay in D.C. Five More Years

On a day full of carefully choreographed events to announce incremental progress on thorny political and economic issues in the U.S.-China relationship, one big diplomatic issue has been put to rest: The pandas can stay at the National Zoo.

Panda Hacker Donates For Cloud’s Future (UPDATED)

China insists its massive Internet population is non-threatening. Indeed, its most notorious hacker is now fostering a cuddly image.

In late 2006, 28-year-old Li Jun designed and spread a computer worm that remains the best-known hacker attack in China. The Panda Burns Incense computer worm posted a cartoon of the blackand white mammal onto computer screens that when clicked would siphon away valuable account information stored on the target computer.

Picture China: Panda Suits, A High-Pressure Test

The day’s China news in Pictures: Panda keepers suit up for a special mission, millions cram civil servant testing centers, Mike Tyson hits Tianjin and more. Click headline to see the full slideshow.

Modern Art: Japan vs. Kung Poo Panda?

Throughout an international career spanning almost two decades, Beijing-based artist and self-styled ‘Pandaman’ Zhao Bandi has been no stranger to controversy. Using media ranging from sarcastically captioned photographs of himself posing with stuffed pandas to panda-themed fashion designs for the catwalks of Shanghai and Paris, Zhao’s ‘panda-mania’ artworks have lashed out at a variety of social and political ills, earning him a controversial reputation as either an avant-garde genius or vulgar sensationalist—depending on your taste.

Zhao is probably best known in the West for petitioning fellow Chinese to boycott Dreamworks box-office smash “Kung Fu Panda” after its release in China in the summer of 2008—a campaign he said was aimed at defending Chinese culture and endangered fauna from exploitation by Hollywood, but which some dismissed as a crude publicity stunt.

Now Zhao is at it again, and this time the provocation is decidedly more “fresh”: A sculpture of a surrendering Japanese soldier, gun held above his head in a gesture of submission … crafted from Chinese panda excrement.

New Turn for Panda Politics?

Pandas were part of the problem in China’s latest spat with Japan.

Now they might be part of the solution.

For the past month, China has been holding a contest to select a group of “Pambassadors” to spread the good bear’s name in China and beyond. More than 60,000 contestants from 52 countries entered the contest, all vying for the chance to care for a panda and spend an expenses-paid month in Chengdu, home to China’s top panda research center, while promoting panda knowledge through a blog on the “Panda Project” website.

At long last, those who’ve been clawing their eyes out in anticipation can sit back and relax. After spending a week in Chengdu learning the bear necessities of panda wildlife and undergoing “an emotionally intense competition,” the victors have finally emerged.

According to a press release from co-organizers Chengdu Panda Base and World Wide Fund for Nature, the six winners hail from the U.S., France, Sweden, Taiwan, China, and—most surprisingly, given recent events—Japan.

China vs. Japan = Panda vs. Ninja?

With leaders in Tokyo and Beijing engaged in an excruciating war of pronouncements over the detention in Japan of a Chinese fishing boat captain, Taiwan’s NextMedia has decided to reimagine the conflict.

In the most recent of its signature animated news videos, NextMedia has Japan, represented by a ninja, and China, in the guise of (what else?) a panda, solving their differences in flat-out hand-to-paw combat. Who needs pursed-lip statements about rule of law and vague threats of “further action” when you can have an exchange of ninja stars and body slams?

If only real diplomacy could be this entertaining. Watch the video:

China’s Giant (Panda) Problem with Japan

China has turned over many stones to show its displeasure with Japan over the arrest of the captain of the Chinese fishing vessel that collided with Japanese patrol boats in a territorial disputed island chain in the East China Sea last Tuesday. Japan’s giant neighbor has since postponed talks on a bilateral treaty on joint maritime gas field development and summoned the Japanese ambassador four times, the latest occurring in the wee hours of Sunday morning. But in case Japan didn’t get the message, China’s latest move hits them where it really hurts: giant pandas.

A Chinese investigative team will be sent to Japan this week to probe the unexpected death of a giant panda on loan to a Japanese zoo, Chinese media outlet Oriental Morning Post reported Monday. In addition, the death in question could cost Japan as much as $500,000.

Continue reading on Japan Real Time.

Chengdu’s Panda Propaganda

Bear with us for another panda story out of China.

Chengdu, one of the largest cities in China’s southwest region, is on the hunt for a so-called Pambassador. Not to be confused with an ambassador for Pam Cooking Spray brand from ConAgra Foods, this ambassador will be dedicated to China’s national treasure: the panda.

The Chengdu Panda Base and World Wide Fund for Nature announced a search for six “charismatic and environment-conscious individuals,” who will win all-expenses-paid trips to the panda base in exchange for a month’s worth of online panda propaganda — daily blogging on the “Panda Project” website and messaging to friends on social-networking sites.