Mexico will have a unique reason to anticipate a surge in tourism after 2024: it will be the final nation in the Americas to be home to the giant panda, Xin Xin. This week, three of the seven who were in the US returned to China; the remaining four will do the same the following year.
Crucially, in 1975, Pe Pe and Ying Ying, Xin’s grandparents, were given—not borrowed—to Mexico as payment for acknowledging China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, making Xin Xin the only one of the world’s four pandas that does not belong to China.
China used a very clever tactic when it started trading adorable pandas for goodwill, even though it had clear undertones of entitlement. Pat Nixon, the wife of US President Richard Nixon at the time, told Zhou En-Lai how much she loved the adorable bears during the First Couple’s “historic” February 1972 visit to China. With a casual gesture, the Chinese prime minister offered to “give some” to her. As promised, two pandas were shipped to the United States in April 1972 and placed in the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
When more than 20,000 Americans came to see the pandas on the zoo’s opening day, China realised that the black-and-white bears might make the best ambassadors for the country. None of the cubs that those two pandas had survived; the ones that did arrive later were classified as loans rather than gifts. Any cubs that were born would have to be sent to China; other nations that received loaned pandas would also have to adhere to this restriction. Indeed, a number of American-born cubs were shipped to China.
Twenty-two nations have received panda loans from China; the most recent recipient was Qatar in 2022. It is impossible to overlook the business aspect of panda diplomacy: each pair of bears costs roughly $1 million annually, and according to Nikkei Asia, China has made $300 million in revenue from panda loans since 1994. The funds are being used to conserve pandas, but it looks like a grab-what-you-can-eat policy where other countries are footing the bill for China’s main instrument of soft power!
Panda loans are the equivalent of being designated as the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) because panda demand always outpaces supply, making pandas a useful indicator of which countries China likes and dislikes. There were fifteen bears housed in zoos in China during the height of the country’s panda cooperation with the US. However, as ties soured, so did the panda population. It will be highlighted that their relationship has reached a low point when the last giant pandas depart the US for China the following year.
In that regard, it is important to highlight that giant pandas have never existed in India and never will. Not even when Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai was at its peak. Not even in the days when the Chinese-loving Indian Communist parties ruled Kerala and West Bengal. Pandas are not known to have been among the “gifts” given to Kannauj by the Tang dynasty between 641 and 658 CE, or else the visiting Buddhist monk Xuanzang would have undoubtedly brought it up!
It’s interesting to note that Pakistan is panda-free despite the Lahore Zoo’s 2011 announcement that it would “rent” some pandas. Pakistan can no longer afford any, but it is strange that pandas, along with other Chinese generosity, were never given to Pakistan. However, in 2019 Chinese President Xi Jinping—often compared to Winnie the Pooh, another bear—loaned two pandas to his “good friend” Vladimir Putin for a period of fifteen years. The pandas also gave birth to their first cub this month.
Giant pandas are not found in North Korea, but they do exist in its southern sister. Since twin cubs were born in July 2023 close to Seoul, South Korea actually has five people. However, both the younger and older pandas have a contractual obligation to be sent to China. In actuality, foreign zoos are also required to pay China a baby tax that amounts to about $2 lakh. Additionally, if a panda passes away overseas—as happened in a Thai zoo in April—there is a clause about an insurance payout. Thailand was required to give China $430,000.
Remarkably, Taiwan is home to the only pandas outside of China’s “ownership,” Xin Xin included. It must be regretted by China that in an act of goodwill in 2008, it gave two pandas, Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan (whose name, incidentally, means reunion). Tuan Tuan passed away in the previous year, but Yuan Yuan and their two daughters, Yuanbao and Yuanzai, who were born at the Taipei Zoo, are still residents of Taiwan. But these pandas will also go to China if it gets its way on the reunification issue.
There are, I suppose, other adorable bear species, like polar bears. Nevertheless, they have not attained the legendary status of giant pandas, despite their adorable appearance. The fact that giant pandas are unique to one nation makes it easier for the rest of the world to accept China’s “ownership” and loan clauses. On the other hand, no country can make decisions regarding polar bears because they are dispersed throughout the far north, from the US (Alaska), Canada, and Greenland to Norway and Russia.
Although koalas are marsupials rather than bears, they may be just as adorable as giant pandas. However, they are unique to Australia, just like pandas. Similarly to China, no one is allowed to keep koalas as pets in Australia. They are only allowed in zoos and in facilities that house sick or injured animals. Australia has long engaged in koala diplomacy, or lending them to other nations, though not as successfully or profitably as China.
One explanation is that, in the past few decades, successful breeding programmes have been made possible by the fact that foreign zoos originally acquired more than one pair of koalas. Furthermore, since those foreign zoos did not agree to a cub return policy, they were soon free to stop depending on Australia for additional koalas. Because any additional cubs would be inbred, China cleverly limited supply to just one pair from the beginning, restricting breeding to a single generation. Would that Australia had the same foresight!
On the fringes of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco next week, President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will be meeting, and US panda enthusiasts will be watching with bated breath. But the likelihood of the four pandas at the Atlanta Zoo remaining in the US after 2024 appears remote, considering China’s icy response to recent US advances. After all, two pandas from the San Diego Zoo were even “recalled” prematurely in 2019 as part of the trade spat between China and the former president Donald Trump.
In the event that things in San Francisco do not work out, Mexico—and Xin Xin—might end up benefiting the most from Americans’ desire for pandas after 2024.
