End of panda diplomacy? Chinese bears could disappear from American zoos by the end of 2024

Wearing a T-shirt reading “I Love Pandas” and holding a newspaper covered in pandas, Kelsey Lambert was full of excitement upon seeing the real animal. She and her mother, Alison, had made a special trip from San Antonio just to watch the furry rock stars at the National Zoo chew bamboo and roll around in the grass with ease.

“It was completely incredible. ” Kelsey, 10, said Friday. “My mother always promised me that one day she would take me. So we had to do it now that they’re leaving.

The three giant pandas of the National Zoo (Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their little Xiao Qi Ji) will return to China in early December, with no public sign that the exchange agreement signed 50 years ago by President Richard Nixon would continue.

National Zoo officials have remained tight-lipped on prospects for renewing or expanding the deal, and repeated attempts to get comment on the status of negotiations went unanswered. However, the zoo’s public stance has been decidedly pessimistic, viewing these remaining months as the end of an era. The zoo has just completed a week-long celebration titled Panda Palooza: A Giant Farewell.

The possible end of the panda era at the National Zoo comes amid what veteran China watchers see as a broader trend. As diplomatic tensions rise between Beijing and several Western governments, China appears to be gradually removing its pandas from several Western zoos as their agreements expire.

Dennis Wilder, senior fellow at the US-China Dialogue Initiative on Global Issues at Georgetown University, He called this trend “punitive panda diplomacy.” noting that two other US zoos have lost their pandas in recent years, while zoos in Scotland and Australia are facing similar departures with no sign of renewing their loan contracts.

Currently, Beijing lends 65 pandas to 19 countries as part of “cooperative research programs” with the stated mission of better protecting vulnerable species. The pandas return to China when they reach old age and the cubs that are born are sent to China at around 3 or 4 years old.

The San Diego Zoo returned its pandas in 2019, and the Memphis, Tennessee Zoo’s last bear returned home earlier this year. The departure of the bears from the National Zoo This would mean the only remaining giant pandas in the United States are at Zoo Atlanta. and this loan agreement expires at the end of next year.

Wilder said that Perhaps the Chinese could “try to send a signal.”

He cited a litany of Sino-American hotspots : sanctions imposed by the US government on prominent Chinese citizens and officials; restrictions on imports of Chinese semiconductors; accusations that fentanyl made in China is flooding American cities; suspicions over Chinese ownership of social media platform TikTok; and the uproar earlier this year over the Chinese balloon floating over the United States.

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

Panda-related tensions have even spilled over into the halls of the U.S. Senate. Last week, the Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman complained about China buying up American farmland He added: “I mean, they’re taking our pandas back. You know, we should get all their farmland back.

This animosity is shared, at least in part, by Chinese public opinion, where anti-American sentiments are on the rise. Those feelings turned into a 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 typically live 15 to 20 years in the wild, while those under human supervision typically live up to 30 years.

The unexpected death of Le Le caused a explosion on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo , with widespread accusations that the Memphis Zoo mistreated the bear and his companion, Ya Ya. The campaign gained momentum when photographs of Ya Ya looking dirty and emaciated (by panda standards) with patchy fur circulated online.

An online petition on Change.org demanded that Ya Ya be fired immediately, citing malnutrition and lack of adequate medical care. Slogans like “panda lives matter” appeared on social media in China as well as emotional memes imploring authorities to save the bear. One meme in particular shows Ya Ya looking miserable staring at a plane flying overhead with the caption: “Mom, I’ve been working outside the home for 20 years. Did I earn enough to buy a plane ticket home?

The tension became so intense that the Memphis Zoo issued a statement in response to what it called “misinformation” about your pandas and stating that Ya Ya has “a chronic skin and coat disease” that “causes her hair to appear thin and uneven” 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 mistreated and had died of heart disease failed to quell the outrage. Ya Ya returned to China as planned in April, when the loan contract expired and received a celebrity welcome at Shanghai airport.

The Chinese government, which offered the first pair of pandas (Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling) to the United States, now leases them for a typical period of 10 years, renewable. The annual contribution varies between 1 and 2 million dollars per couple , plus mandatory costs to build and maintain facilities to house the animals. All cubs born to pandas belong to the Chinese government, but can be rented for an additional fee until they reach mating age.

Throughout the 50 years of loan agreements for American pandas , the deal has had more than one bad streak. In 2010, Daniel Ashe, then head of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, traveled to China to help resolve a bureaucratic technical problem that threatened the renewal of the National Zoo agreement. The issue was quickly resolved and the deal was extended.

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

Observers remain hopeful that this kind of last-minute high-level intervention will happen. Wilder spoke of the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, to be held in San Francisco in November, as a potential meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping make headlines by breaking the deadlock. And China’s ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, has been semi-optimistic in his public statements.

“I will do everything I can to make this happen, and here in Aspen there will be (pandas) too,” Xie said at the Aspen Safety Forum in July in Aspen, Colorado.

But for now, Panda lovers of all ages make a pilgrimage to Washington to take one last look at the bears. At the zoo on Friday, amid the chatter of children, there was a couple of adults with a baby on the way, each wearing headbands with panda ears. Colleen Blue and John Nungesser came from outside Philadelphia to see the pandas. This was Blue’s third time.

“I’ve been obsessed with them since I was little. “I used to overwhelm people with facts about pandas,” he said.

Nungesser nodded and added, “On our first date, he couldn’t stop talking about pandas.”

Blue said she burst into tears and “threw a tantrum” when she found out the Washington pandas were leaving. The couple is already planning, after the birth of their baby, to take him to see the pandas in Atlanta next summer before they leave.

And Alison Lambert, Kelsey’s mother, said she remains optimistic that the two sides will reach an agreement simply because it is mutually beneficial. And if they don’t, Kelsey is already making a plan B.

“We could always go to China,” he said. “It works too.”