China-US diplomacy hits panda-monium. Why are the bears going home?

By James On Oct 3, 2023

Wearing an ‘I Love Pandas’ T-shirt and holding a panda-covered diary, Kelsey Lambert was buzzing with excitement as she caught a glimpse of the real thing. She and her mother, Alison, had made a special trip from San Antonio just to watch the National Zoo’s furry rock stars casually nibble on bamboo and roll on the grass.

“It felt completely amazing,” Kelsey said Friday. “My mother always promised that one day she would take me with her. So we had to do it now that they’re leaving.”

The National Zoo’s three giant pandas – Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji – will return to China in early December with no public signs that President Richard Nixon’s 50-year-old exchange deal will continue.

National Zoo officials have remained tight-lipped about the prospects of renewing or expanding the agreement, and repeated attempts to get comment on the state of negotiations yielded no response. However, the zoo’s public stance was decidedly pessimistic, viewing the remaining months as the end of an era. The zoo just wrapped up a weeklong celebration called Panda Palooza: A Giant Farewell.

The potential end of the National Zoo’s panda era comes amid what seasoned China observers say is a larger trend. With diplomatic tensions running high between Beijing and some Western governments, China appears to be gradually withdrawing its pandas from several Western zoos as their agreements expire.

Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues, called the trend “punitive panda diplomacy” and noted that two other US zoos have lost their pandas in recent years, while zoos in Scotland and Australia face similar departures with no signs of extending their loan agreements.

Beijing is currently lending 65 pandas to 19 countries through “cooperative research programs” with the mission to better protect the vulnerable species. The pandas return to China when they grow old and any young born are sent to China around the age of three or four.

The San Diego Zoo returned its pandas in 2019, and the last bear at the Memphis, Tennessee Zoo went home earlier this year. The departure of the bears from the National Zoo would mean that the only giant pandas left in America are at the Atlanta Zoo – and that the loan agreement will expire at the end of next year.

Mr Wilder said the Chinese may be “trying to send a signal.”

He cited a litany of Sino-American sticking points: sanctions imposed by the U.S. government on prominent Chinese citizens and officials; restrictions on imports of Chinese semiconductors; allegations that Chinese-made fentanyl is flooding American cities; suspicion over Chinese ownership of the social media platform TikTok; and the uproar early this year over the Chinese balloon that floated over America.

Beijing, Mr. Wilder said, is convinced that “NATO and the United States are lining up against China.”

The panda-related tension has even reached the halls of the US Senate. Last week, Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman complained about China buying up American farmland, adding, “I mean, they’re taking back our pandas. You know, we have to take back all their farmland.”

That hostility is at least partly shared by the public in China, where anti-American sentiment is on the rise. These feelings developed into a perfect panda storm earlier this year when Le Le, a male panda on loan to the Memphis Zoo, died suddenly in February at the age of 24. Pandas in the wild typically live 15 to 20 years, while those in human care often live around 30 years.

Le Le’s unexpected death sparked an explosion on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo, with widespread accusations that the Memphis Zoo had abused the bear and its female companion, Ya Ya. The campaign intensified as photos circulated online of Ya Ya looking dirty and thin (by panda standards) and with a patchy coat.

An online petition on Change.org demanded that Ya Ya be returned immediately, citing malnutrition and lack of proper medical care. Slogans such as “the panda’s life matters” emerged on Chinese social media, along with emotional memes pleading with authorities to save the bear. One particular meme shows a miserable-looking Ya Ya flying overhead with the caption: “Mom, I worked outside the home for 20 years. Have I earned enough for a plane ticket to return home?”

The heat became so intense that the Memphis Zoo released a statement in response to what it called “misinformation” about the pandas, saying Ya Ya “has a chronic skin and coat condition” that “makes her hair look thin and patchy.” and that Le Le died of natural causes.

Even an official Chinese scientific delegation that visited Memphis and announced that Le Le had not been abused and died of heart disease failed to quell the outrage. Ya Ya was returned to China on schedule in April when the loan agreement expired and was welcomed by a celebrity at Shanghai airport.

The Chinese government, which donated the first pair of pandas – Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling – to the US, now leases the pandas for a renewable term of typically ten years. The annual fee ranges from $1 million to $2 million per pair, plus mandatory costs to build and maintain facilities to house the animals. Each cub born to the pandas is owned by the Chinese government, but can be rented out for an additional fee until it reaches mating age.

In the fifty years of U.S. panda lending, the deal has seen more than one rough patch. In 2010, Daniel Ashe, then head of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, traveled to China to help resolve a technical bureaucratic problem that threatened the renewal of the National Zoo’s agreement. The problem was quickly resolved and the agreement was extended.

“But the situation is completely different now,” said Mr Ashe, now chief executive of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. “What we are seeing now are tensions between our governments at a much higher level, and they need to be addressed and resolved at that level.”

Observers are hopeful that precisely these kinds of high-level interventions will come through at the eleventh hour. Mr Wilder pointed to the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco in November as a potential forum for President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping to make headlines by breaking the impasse. And China’s ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, sounded semi-optimistic in his public statements.

“I will do my utmost to do that, and here, in Aspen, there will be (pandas) too,” Mr. Xie said at the Aspen Security Forum in July in Aspen, Colorado.

But for now, panda lovers of all ages are making pilgrimages to Washington for one last glimpse of the bears. At the zoo on Friday, amid the chatter of children, an adult couple was on the way with a baby – each wearing matching panda ear headbands. Colleen Blue and John Nungesser came from outside Philadelphia to see the pandas; this was the third time for Mrs. Blue.

“I’ve been obsessed with it since I was little. I used to just bury people in panda facts,” she said.