PANDANOMICS

Deutsch: Großer Panda im Ocean Park, Hongkong (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pandas are big business for China, said Sophia Yan in CNN.com. The Chinese government “currently has about 50 of the supercute black-and-white furballs loaned out to zoos across the world”—almost all in exchange for major trade and investment deals with China. In 2011, Scotland entered into a multibillion-dollar deal with China, trading oil-drilling technology and salmon for a pair of pandas. In other countries, the demand for pandas has reached critical mass. In 2006, Australia agreed to supply China with uranium in exchange for a pair of pandas, while Canada and France have “both signed multibillion-dollar uranium export deals that coincided with panda loans.” And it’s not over yet. “There seems to be a backlog of countries clamoring for pandas,” said Oxford University researcher Kathleen Buckingham.