Mizengo Peter Pinda, Prime Minister of the United Republic of Tanzania together with H.E. Hui Liangyu, Vice Premier of the People’s Republic of China and ..

Chinese diplomatic and military staff went on buying sprees for illegal ivory while on official visits to Tanzania, sending prices soaring, an environmental activist group said Thursday.

Tens of thousands of elephants are estimated to be slaughtered in Africa each year to feed rising Asian demand for ivory products, mostly from China, the continent’s biggest trading partner. Indeed, one report said 70 per cent of illegal ivory is purchased in China.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Tanzania in 2013, members of his government and business delegation bought so much ivory that local prices doubled to $700 per kilogram, the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said in a report, citing ivory traders in the Dar es Salaam.

“When the guest come, the whole delegation, that’s then time when the business goes up,” the EIA quoted a vendor named Suleiman as saying.

They alleged that the buyers took advantage of a lack of security checks for diplomatic visitors to smuggle their purchases back to China on Xi’s plane.

Similar sales were made on a previous trip by China’s former President Hu Jintao, the report said, and Chinese embassy staff were also described as “major buyers.”

A Chinese navy visit to Tanzania last year by vessels returning from anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden “prompted a surge in business for Dar es Salaam-based ivory traders”, it said.

A Chinese national named Yu Bo was arrested during the naval visit as he attempted to enter Dar es Salaam port in a lorry containing 81 elephant tusks — hidden under wooden carvings — which he planned to deliver to two mid-ranking Chinese naval officers, the EIA said.

Yu was convicted by a local court in March and sentenced to 20 years in jail, it added.

Tanzania is a key ally of China in East Africa, and its President Jakaya Kikwete reportedly signed deals worth $1.7 billion on a visit to Beijing last month.

Tanzania had about 142,000 elephants when Kikwete took office in 2005, the EIA said, adding that by 2015 the population is likely to have plummeted to about 55,000 as a result of poaching.

tonnes of Ivory : many elephants killed for this

Almost all ivory sales were banned in 1989 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), to which both China and Tanzania are signatories.

China often says that it pays “great attention”, to the protection of endangered wildlife, and in recent years has carried out several high-profile arrests of smugglers caught in its territory, along with a televised incineration of seized ivory.

The environmental group WWF estimated that around 25,000 African elephants were hunted for ivory in 2011, predicting the toll to rise. There could be as few as 470,000 left, it says.

Why ivory is in high demand

According to a posting in Wikipedia, Ivory is a hard, white material, derived from the tusks and teeth of animals, that is used in art or manufacturing. It consists of dentine, a tissue that is similar to bone. It has been valued since ancient times for making a range of items, from ivory carvings to false teeth, fans, and dominoes.

And in a 6 September 2012 article published by The Atlantic, Rebbeca J.Rosen, a senior editor gave this insight about why there is an insatiable demand for ivory:

“The comparison to diamonds is commonly made: Diamonds, like ivory, are a natural substance with little inherent value but prized social significance. Desire in richer lands tumbles poorer societies into resource wars and labor abuse. And certainly the modern dynamics are the same. But demand for ivory is something demand for diamonds is not: ancient. And its history as a technology, a material with few peers for centuries, propels this demand even today.

“Diamonds, as a cultural symbol, are an invention of the 20th century, the result of a collaboration between Mad Men and De Beers. Ivory, in contrast, has been used and valued for millennia. In China, according to Ivory’s Ghosts by John Frederick Walker, artistic ivory carvings exist from as far back as the sixth millennium BCE, excavated in Zhejiang Province. “By the Shang Dinasty (ca. 1600-ca. 1046 BCE) a highly developed carving tradition had taken hold,” he writes. Specimens from this period are today in museums around the world.

“But ivory wasn’t solely prized for its aesthetic value. Ivory’s properties — durability, the ease with which it can be carved, and its absence of splintering — uniquely suited it for a variety of uses. Archaeologists and historians have recovered many practical tools made out of ivory: buttons, hairpins, chopsticks, spear tips, bow tips, needles, combs, buckles, handles, billiard balls, and so on. In more modern times we are all familiar with ivory’s continued use as piano keys until very recently; Steinway only discontinued its ivory keys in 1982.

“What do many of these things have in common? Today we make them out of plastic, but for thousands of years, ivory was among the best, if not the very best, option — the plastic of the pre-20th-century world. For some of these items (piano keys being the most prominent example) we didn’t have a comparable alternative until very recently…

“That usefulness, combined with its warm luster and its receptivity to engravings, meant that it gained stature as a luxury good from the get-go. China’s demand for ivory today shows the staying power of a luxury symbol, even if a substance’s inherent qualities have been superseded by new materials.”

Rosen’s article was entitled: What Is It About an Elephant’s Tusks That Make Them So Valuable?.You can read more here: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/what-is-it-about-an-elephants-tusks-that-make-them-so-valuable/262021/?single_page=true