A farewell
Thousands of Japanese bade an emotional farewell to four pandas that will return to China this week. Xiang Xiang, who was born at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo in 2017 was the biggest draw while the other three pandas are at a park in western Wakayama region.
Panda is diplomacy:
Pandas have been a part of China’s foreign policy since the 1950s as part of its ‘panda diplomacy’ programme. China gifted its first panda, Ping Ping, to the USSR in 1957. Similar gifts went to North Korea (1965), the US (1972), Japan (1972, 1980, 1982), France (1973), UK and Germany (1974) and Mexico (1975) as well.
It’s now a loan:
China stopped giving pandas away in 1982 when they became endangered (there are about 1,860 giant pandas left in the wild and about 600 in captivity). The zoos that get the Chinese panda loan have to pay $1 million per panda per year which goes towards panda conservation projects. If a panda cub is born, zoos pay an extra $400,000. The pandas, and any cubs they produce, remain the property of China.
T&C apply:
So, what makes a country deserving of China’s panda loan? Japan got its first giant pandas from China in 1972 to mark the normalisation of ties between the two countries. A 2013 Oxford University study had said that panda gifts coincide with signing of important trade deals. China has also recalled gifted pandas to show its unhappiness as it did in 2017 when US President Obama met the Dalai Lama.