@Deer Forest, neither do I. It is rather overtly alarmist in nature and comes from the same channels that protested over earlier imports. Not all of these are quite that reliable!
The one publicized report I know about involved 4 African juvenile elephants for both Urumqi's Tian Shan Zoo and Taiyuan Zoo. What - in my view rightly - angered protesters there was the very fact that at Taiyuan Zoo one of their two elephants died shortly upon arrival.
A Chinese University animal welfare team with trained volunteers found that no measures where in place to combat the sub-zero temperatures at Taiyuan Zoo compared to Zimbabwe. The English language China Daily reported on the subject, however their articles tend to be a short transliteration from Chinese language and thus may not fully convey what their exact findings where nor what type of housing, management and husbandry level was in place at Taiyuan Zoo.
I hate to make any qualified judgements there without any direct or photographic evidence from the Taiyuan Zoo on their elephant husbandry management in question!
What I will hold up - even in court (LOL) - is that whereas I have no particular issues with importing groups of young elephants for conservation breeding purposes (rather than simply display only), I find it not in any animal welfare interest that the imported elephants are simply divided up and maintained as 2 loosely related individuals together without any heed to their biological (or should I say … ecological functional role) social herd structure.
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