Source: The Conversation – UK
Two giant pandas recently landed in Atlanta, a week after Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Washington.
The summit produced no immediate breakthrough on trade deals, Taiwan or AI, but it did produce something cuddly for the American public: a pair of giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, which are on a ten-year loan to Atlanta’s zoo. Both were born in 2020 at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, the showpiece of a decades-old conservation effort.
China treats the giant panda as a national treasure and retains ownership every one it lends abroad. Sending a pair is a mark of favour: the bears draw crowds and signal Beijing values the relationship. When relations cool, the loans often seem to lapse and the pandas return to China. This is panda diplomacy.
From gifts to rentals
Some trace the practice to the Tang dynasty, when Empress Wu Zetian is said to have sent a pair of bears, believed to be pandas, to Japan, between 624 and 725 AD. The better-documented history begins in 1941, when Chiang Kai-shek’s government sent a pair to New York’s Bronx zoo as thanks for American aid.
But it was Mao Zedong who turned the gesture into policy. In 1957 he sent a panda, also called Ping Ping, to the Soviet Union, and by 1982 China had given away 23 pandas to nine countries. The most famous pair, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, were sent to Washington to commemorate Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing. They drew more than 20,000 people to the Smithsonian national zoo on their first day and an estimated 1.1 million in their first year.
Under Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, gifts became rentals in 1984, and pandas went on short, lucrative tours. The Los Angeles zoo paid US$100,000 (£75,500) a month for a pair during the 1984 Olympics.
Not everyone was charmed. Conservation groups such as The New York Zoological Society viewed the tours as money-making ventures. In 1988, when the Toledo zoo hosted a pair for 100 days it attracted protests. A judge barred the zoo from charging visitors extra to see them. In 1993 the US Fish and Wildlife Service stopped issuing new import permits. When it resumed in 1998, the new rules said a significant share of the money should protect wild pandas in China.
The result is today’s arrangement: long-term “research” loans, usually for ten years and up to US$1 million a year, with any cub born abroad remaining Chinese property. The rules changed, but the loans still follow Beijing’s interests. University of Oxford researchers found that loans after 2008 often coincided with trade deals. Malaysia received Xing Xing and Liang Liang in 2014 to mark 40 years of ties. And as relations with Washington soured, its pandas flew home in November 2023.
A conservation story
China set up its first panda reserves and banned hunting in the early 1960s. When a mass die-off of bamboo happened in 2005 and pandas starved, rescuers brought many into captivity. The Chengdu base opened in 1987 with six rescued wild pandas.
A national panda programme followed in 1993. Today there are 67 reserves and a Giant Panda National Park. Wild numbers rose from 1,114 in the mid-1980s to 1,864 by 2014, and in 2016 pandas were moved off the endangered list.
The Chengdu base, a tourist magnet, breeds pandas for display and diplomacy. Releasing them is the job of a separate state body, the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda (CCRC). Its scientists say releases are replenishing fragile wild populations. they claim that this makes every zoo panda, including those lent abroad, a lifeline for wild ones. Some are sceptical about this claim.
Two decades of releases
The CCRC began moving pandas to the wild in 2003. Its first, Xiang Xiang, was found dead within a year. Of the dozen released since then, ten have survived, while more than 700 remain in captivity.
The only permanently released panda known to have had a cub, Luxin, was born wild.
Since 2017, previously captive females moved to the forest temporarily to mate with wild males, then returned to captivity, have produced 14 cubs, 12 of them surviving.
Bears for summits
Chinese scientists say the pandemic slowed its rewilding project, but its lack of success has drawn criticism from those who believe it should have had more emphasis and investment.
So far the attempts to replenish the wild panda population have not been as successful as many had hoped, and only small groups of giant pandas survive.
On the other hand China’s attempts to mix trade and conservation in zoos continues to create significant public relation successes. Each new announcement of new pandas heading to a foreign zoo attracts international attention and symbolises a renewed trading and foreign policy relationship between two nations. Something that Beijing will no doubt want to keep building on.
Chee Meng Tan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/12/chinas-panda-diplomacy-how-beijing-combines-conservation-and-trade/