Panda diplomacy
After spending some time at Graham's house in Chengdu, they were brought to Chongqing for a formal handover to a representative of the Bronx Zoo.
[6]: 59–60 Annalee Whitmore, then working as publicity manager for United China Relief, interviewed the participants and wrote the transcript.
Unfortunately, while they were en route, Pearl Harbor was bombed;[2]: 95–97 and, when they arrived in San Francisco in late December 1941, front-page news was all about war.
[8] The bears were officially received by the Bronx Zoo on December 30, 1941, and five months later, following a national contest, they were named Pan-dee and Pan-dah.
[11] When President Nixon visited China in 1972, Mao Zedong promised to send two pandas to an American zoo.
[11] Upon the pandas' arrival in April 1972, First Lady Pat Nixon donated them to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where she welcomed them in an official ceremony.
Over 20,000 people visited the pandas the first day they were on display, and an estimated 1.1 million visitors came to see them the first year they were in the United States.
The pandas were delivered by Vicepremier of the State Council Chen Yonggui and received by First Lady María Esther Zuno.
[20] On March 11, 2006, the ROC formally rejected the offer, with President Chen Shui-bian explaining in his weekly newsletter, "A-bian (Chen's nickname) sincerely urges the Chinese leaders to leave the giant pandas in their natural habitat because pandas brought up in cages or given as gifts will not be happy.
[23] The ROC quickly issued a rebuttal to the CITES statement and insisted that the country-to-country transfer protocols were respected.
[26] In 2013, PRC officials used panda diplomacy in an attempt to scuttle a 2013 agricultural trade deal between Nebraska and Taiwan.
[27] In the late 2010s and early 2020s, with China–United States relations straining, China began declining to renew panda leases for U.S.
[32][33] Scholars, including Johns Hopkins University political economist Ho-fung Hung, have questioned whether a deterioration in US-China relations starting in the late 2010s brought an end to panda diplomacy between the two countries.
[34] In a 2023 Washington Post opinion piece, Lonnie G. Bunch III and Ellen Stofan, secretary and undersecretary, respectively, of the Smithsonian Institution, called the return of the National Zoo's pandas "a lesson in cultural diplomacy."
They wrote: "Pandas are a vital source of cultural diplomacy — using the arts, science and history to help nations find common ground with the hopes of building on our shared humanity to create a more peaceful world.
They concluded: "If we can save this iconic species, then surely, we can work together to tackle some of our greatest challenges, including climate change and preservation of ecosystems around the world.
[36][37] These pandas, who are named Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, arrived in late June 2024 and debuted to the public on August 8, 2024.
The leader was quoted as saying "Giant pandas are very popular among the Japanese, and they are a symbol of the friendly ties between Japan and China.
[42] In January 2006, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick was photographed hugging a five-month-old panda cub during his visit to Sichuan.
The Chinese media widely broadcast the image and it was purportedly interpreted as a sign that Zoellick supported better relations between China and the United States.
[43] On April 16, 2014, China planned to send a pair of pandas named Fu Wa and Feng Yi to Malaysia to mark their 40-year diplomatic ties but were postponed following the MH370 tragedy.
[48] Two pandas, Cai Tao and Hu Chun, arrived in Jakarta in 2017 to be placed in Taman Safari in Bogor as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of China–Indonesia relations.
Owing to the difficulty of securing a consistent and adequate supply of fresh bamboo, Calgary Zoo returned their pair of pandas ahead of schedule, to join their progeny back in China.
The public started to blame this incident on China's panda diplomacy, with many arguing that sending the animals overseas and outside their endemic habitat was detrimental to their health, further exacerbating their population decline.
