Why is China loaning pandas to the D.C. zoo? A quick historical past of panda diplomacy

What’s black, white and again within the nation’s capital? Big pandas, ultimately.

Bao Li and Qing Bao, each three years previous, are making their public debut on the Smithsonian Nationwide Zoological Park (aka the Nationwide Zoo) on Friday after months of anticipation and fanfare — together with panda-themed pop-up bars, lodge packages and special-edition transit playing cards.

The pair arrived in D.C. — aboard the fittingly nicknamed “Panda Express” — from China again in October. Since then, they may solely be glimpsed sometimes on the zoo’s social media feed (together with rolling round within the flurries throughout a snowstorm earlier this month).

Now, after a requisite quarantine and transient preview interval for zoo members, the panda exhibit and its accompanying Big Panda Cam are again on full show.

“Bao Li and Qing Bao have already won the hearts of our staff and volunteers, and we are excited to welcome panda fans back to the Zoo — the only place in the nation where you can see giant pandas for free — and celebrate the newest chapter of our giant panda breeding and conservation program,” stated Brandie Smith, director of the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.

Scientists estimate there are fewer than 2,000 big pandas residing within the wild, scattered all through half a dozen mountainous areas in China. About 420 pandas dwell in captivity in zoos and reserves, principally however not completely in China.

That is as a result of, over the past half a century, China has both gifted or loaned its beloved bears to zoos around the globe, a follow that is grow to be often called “panda diplomacy.” In trade, zoos pay a hefty payment to help panda conservation applications in China.

Below the Nationwide Zoo’s settlement, Bao Li and Qing Bao will keep in D.C. till 2034, and any cubs they delivery will transfer to China by age 4. The zoo is paying $1 million yearly to contribute to tasks together with restoring big panda habitat, monitoring wildlife ailments and assessing the impacts of local weather change.

Along with D.C., the San Diego Zoo welcomed two pandas in 2024, whereas the San Francisco Zoo is anticipating the arrival of a pair this 12 months.

Panda diplomacy is seen as a method for China to not solely preserve wildlife however promote goodwill and strengthen diplomatic ties with different international locations — bringing a complete new that means to gentle energy.

“Many people don’t realize it, but there are actually two Chinese ambassadors in Washington: me and the panda cub at the National Zoo,” Cui Tiankai, China’s then-ambassador to the U.S., wrote in a 2013 Washington Publish op-ed.

Here is a have a look at the present state of panda diplomacy — and the way we bought right here.

The early years: Panda-monium begins to unfold

The primary residing big panda exhibited within the U.S. was named Su Lin. The three-month-old cub was captured and introduced over from China in 1936 by American clothier and socialite Ruth Harkness, who was impressed to hold out her late husband’s dream.

Su Lin, who was named after Harkness’ Chinese language information’s sister-in-law — he was believed to be feminine till after his dying — ended up at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, the place he grew to become a star attraction, profitable over superstar admirers together with Shirley Temple. He died of pneumonia in 1938, simply weeks after Harkness introduced again one other panda from China — Mei Mei — to affix him. Su Lin’s physique remains to be on show at Chicago’s Area Museum.

Foreigners captured and took over a dozen pandas from China over the following decade, in line with the World Wildlife Basis (WWF), whose brand occurs to be a panda. By the Nineteen Forties, China sought to finish the exploitation of its pandas by foreigners, however acknowledged it had one thing particular to supply its pals.

E. Elena Songster, a historical past professor at St. Mary’s School of California who authored Panda Nation: The Building and Conservation of China’s Fashionable Icon, advised WBUR in 2024 that the primary time pandas have been used “as diplomatic expression” was in 1941.

“Chiang Kai-shek’s wife, Soong Mei-ling, offered a pair of pandas to the United States as an expression of gratitude for our assistance with them in their war of resistance against Japan,” she defined.

The Individuals’s Republic of China continued that follow within the years after it took over in 1949. The U.S. initially did not acknowledge and tried to weaken the communist authorities, forbade Americans from visiting the nation and inspired its allies to not have diplomatic relations with China.

China started gifting pandas to its allies, together with the Soviet Union and North Korea. It despatched its first panda ambassadors, Ping Ping and Qi Qi, to the Soviet Union in 1957 to have fun the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution, writes Yu Tao, a professor of Chinese language Research on the College of Western Australia.

Between 1957 and 1983, the nation despatched 24 pandas to international international locations, together with the U.S.

Mid-Twentieth century: Panda diplomacy reaches the U.S. 

The U.S. and China started to heat to one another all through the Nineteen Seventies, with President Richard Nixon’s landmark 1972 go to signaling the start of a coverage of engagement.

A pivotal second got here when China gave its first pair of pandas to the U.S., simply months after Nixon’s journey.

At a dinner in Beijing, whereas seated subsequent to Chinese language Premier Zhou Enlai, First Girl Patricia Nixon commented on a field of cigarettes adorned with pandas: “Aren’t they cute? I love them.”

“I’ll give you some,” he replied, in line with the Richard Nixon Basis.

Zhou gifted two big pandas to the U.S., and the Nixons selected the Nationwide Zoo as their dwelling.

Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing arrived in April 1972 and lived on the zoo for the following twenty years. They drew hundreds of thousands of holiday makers till their deaths in 1992 and 1999, and set a brand new custom in movement.

“[The gift] made a huge splash because the U.S. was a former enemy state, and so it was a giant gesture of diplomatic friendship,” Songster explains. “And from that moment, [China] saw how warmly welcomed the pandas were and how popular they were and how useful they were for putting a friendly face on China.”

By 1979, the U.S. and China had established full diplomatic relations.

As different international locations — together with West Germany and Japan — acknowledged Beijing within the early Nineteen Seventies, they obtained pandas of their very own. Quickly, nevertheless, the follow started to look unsustainable.

Flip of the millennium: Presents flip into loans

Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, China stopped giving pandas as presents over issues about its potential to take care of the wild inhabitants.

“And also at that time, there was a panda starvation scare, because there was a huge bamboo die-off in the pandas’ range,” Songster defined. “And so from that point forward, they started loaning them.”

That shift additionally embodied “China’s market-orientated economic reforms,” Tao wrote, with bears bringing in some $500,000 to $1 million per 12 months.

Whereas mortgage durations have been initially comparatively brief, by the Nineteen Nineties they’d grown to at the least 10 years, Songster stated, proving much less annoying for the animals and extra conducive to copy.

In 1998, the U.S. shifted its acceptance coverage to solely enable a panda to reside stateside if China devoted greater than half of its annual payment to conservation efforts, in line with the Historical past Channel.

At the moment: What pandas can inform us about politics  

Students have famous that China’s panda technique has advanced over the a long time from strategic gift-giving to a monetary transaction to, as of latest years, a logo of commerce relationships.

Certainly, lots of China’s panda loans have coincided with commerce offers. Shortly after the Edinburgh Zoo obtained two pandas in 2011, Scotland and China signed commerce agreements involving salmon and renewable vitality expertise. The mortgage of two pandas to Germany in 2017 overlapped with Chinese language chief Xi Jinping’s go to to Berlin.

The timing of panda loans has additionally appeared to replicate the extent of rigidity between China and different nations.

The arrival of two pandas to Malaysia in 2014 — to mark the fortieth anniversary of its diplomatic ties with Beijing — was delayed by a number of months due to disagreements over Malaysia’s dealing with of the disappearance of Flight MH370 (lots of its passengers have been Chinese language).

In November 2023, the Nationwide Zoo despatched its three pandas — Tian Tian and Mei Xiang, who had lived there since 2000, and their cub Xiao Qi Ji — again to China, prematurely of the expiration of their mortgage settlement and amidst rising tensions between the 2 international locations.

There was no settlement in place on the time for a brand new set of pandas to move to D.C., and Atlanta was left as the one zoo within the nation housing any pandas.

Every week later, nevertheless, Xi signaled openness to sending extra pandas to the U.S., particularly California. And in Might 2024, the official announcement got here down: A pair of pandas — Bao Li and Qing Bao — would arrive within the States by the tip of the 12 months.