P-pick up a panda

TheLastStraw: Officially it's the year of the dog. But, mark my words, once the second full moon after the winter solstice has ushered in the Chinese year 4703 tonight, the next 12 months will be all about the giant panda.

(Before we go any further, I'd like to acknowledge here that while the internet company Google was rightly criticised this week for accepting censorship from Beijing, much of the previous sentence would have been impossible without its assistance.) Last year, penguins were all the rage. This was due partly to the hit documentary March of the Penguins, which I saw recently and which I can say is justifiably shortlisted for the Oscars. If the lead penguin doesn't win best actress - albeit in a weak year for female roles - there's no justice. But flightless birds are last season now.

Meanwhile, black-and-white is the new black-and-white in the animal kingdom. With or without a Morgan Freeman voice-over, pandas are going to be this year's thing. The main focus of attention will be China's unilateral panda launch at neighbouring Taiwan, scheduled for June.

This promises to be an exciting event, if it happens. China has abandoned the "panda diplomacy" for which it was once famous, and now no longer exports the threatened species abroad, except on loan. Which makes its offer of a pair to Taiwan - regarded by Beijing as a rebellious province rather than a separate country - look all the more of a masterstroke.

The cunning plan to drive a wedge between Taiwan's panda-loving masses and their rulers is working perfectly. While the government there still bridles at the offer, one opinion poll - greeted gleefully back in China - puts public support for the bears at 73 per cent. Meanwhile, the prospect is increasing of the ultimate PR coup. If the panda gift is a Trojan horse, as pro-independence Taiwanese politicians warn,

it won't be Chinese soldiers that emerge from it. It'll be something even more dangerous: a baby panda.

Unlike penguins, who find time for romance (including dinner and a movie, the way Morgan Freeman tells it) even in the world's harshest climate, pandas are notoriously indifferent to anything other than eating. Sex they can take or leave. But the Chinese have done their homework. The chosen pandas were selected from a pool of 23 candidates, through a series of genetic tests and "trial marriages", and Beijing is now hinting that if it accepts the gift, Taiwan will soon hear the crunch of tiny teeth on bamboo shoots.

According to the Xinhua news agency, the chosen pair "seem to be a perfect match and are pretty much in love". Even better, the agency predicts, the offspring will be both "attractive" - what were the chances of that? - and "lively".

The panda pair are still officially known as "Number 19" and "Number 16", which is hardly romantic. (I had hoped that if Taiwan refused, China might loan them to Belfast Zoo instead, to cement the peace process here. Sad to say, this is probably ruled out by the danger that republicans could - with impeccable logic - name the offspring "1916"). But a public competition in China, results of which are to be announced this weekend, is likely to christen them "Yuan Yuan" and "Tuan Tuan", names that together, apparently, mean "reunion". Hint, hint.

No doubt Taiwan could re-christen them on arrival with names that, together, would mean "internationally recognised independence and membership of the UN". For now, however, its government insists that a formal decision on the gift will be made in March. In the meantime, China is turning up the pressure. The latest news is that the pandas are getting daily lessons in Taiwanese dialect. Presumably the long-term plan, if their poll ratings hold up, is that they will join the island's pro-China opposition and run for office.

Anyway, after the success of March of the Penguins, the panda story will surely not be lost on Hollywood. It's just a question of whether they opt for another straight documentary or, with animatronics, something more elaborate. The panda life-cycle is the standard plot of romantic comedy - will they get it on, or won't they? - and you can easily hear Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks doing the voices. Or maybe Brad and Angelina. But who am I, telling Hollywood how to incubate eggs?

By the way, while we're on the subject, whatever happened to the Fiat Panda? You remember those little boxy, black-and-white cars that were on the market 20 or so years back? They were really cute to look at, although they could be a bit sluggish, and you rarely saw two of them together. I don't know: they just seemed to die out eventually.