Kelsey Lambert, wearing an “I Love Pandas” T-shirt and clutching a panda-covered diary, bubbled with excitement as she glimpsed the real thing last week.
She and her mother, Alison, had made a special trip from San Antonio to watch the National Zoo’s furry rock stars casually munching bamboo and rolling around on the grass.
“It felt completely amazing,” said Kelsey, 10. “My mom has always promised she would take me one day. So we had to do it now that they’re going away.”
The National Zoo’s three giant pandas — Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji — are set to return to China in early December with no public signs that the 50-year-old exchange agreement struck by President Nixon will continue.
National Zoo officials have remained tight-lipped about the prospects of renewing or extending the agreement, and repeated attempts to gain comment on the state of the negotiations did not receive a response.
The public stance of the National Zoo has been decidedly pessimistic. The zoo is treating these remaining months as the end of an era and has finished a weeklong celebration called Panda Palooza: A Giant Farewell.
PHOTOS: Panda Diplomacy: The departure of DC's beloved pandas may signal a wider Chinese pullback
The potential end of the panda era is part of what veteran China watchers say is a larger trend. With diplomatic tensions running high between Beijing and several Western governments, China appears to be gradually pulling back its pandas as agreements expire.
Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, called the trend “punitive panda diplomacy.” He noted that two other American zoos have lost their pandas in recent years and zoos in Scotland and Australia are facing similar departures with no signs of renewal of their loan agreements.
Beijing currently lends out 65 pandas to 19 countries through “cooperative research programs,” with a stated mission to better protect the vulnerable species. The pandas return to China when they reach old age, and any cubs born are sent to China around age 3 or 4.
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 National Zoo’s bears would mean that the only giant pandas left in America are at the Atlanta Zoo. That loan agreement expires late next year.
Mr. Wilder said the Chinese could be “trying to send a signal.”
He cited a litany of Chinese-American flashpoints: sanctions imposed by the U.S. government on prominent Chinese citizens and officials, restrictions on the import of Chinese semiconductors, accusations that Chinese-made fentanyl is flooding American cities, suspicion about Chinese ownership of the social media platform TikTok and the uproar early this year over the Chinese balloon floating over America.
Mr. Wilder said Beijing is convinced that “NATO and the United States are lining up against China.”
The panda-related tension has even spilled into the hallways of the U.S. Senate. Last week, Sen. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania Democrat, complained about China buying up American farmland and added, “I mean, they’re taking back our pandas. You know, we should take back all their farmland.”
Anti-American sentiments are on the rise in China, where the public has partially shared that animosity. Those sentiments developed into a perfect panda storm when Le Le, a male panda on loan to the zoo in Memphis, died suddenly in February at the age of 24. Pandas generally live 15 to 20 years in the wild, but those in human care often live to be around 30.
Le Le’s unexpected death prompted an explosion on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo, with widespread allegations that the Memphis Zoo had mistreated the bear and his female companion, Ya Ya. The campaign gained intensity when photos circulated on the internet of Ya Ya looking dirty and gaunt (by panda standards) with patchy fur.
An online petition on Change.org demanded Ya Ya be returned immediately. It alleged malnourishment and deprivation of proper medical care.
Slogans such as “the panda’s life matters” surfaced in China’s social media along with emotional memes pleading with authorities to rescue the bear. One particular meme depicts a miserable-looking Ya Ya gazing at a plane flying overhead with the caption: “Mama, I have worked away from home for 20 years. Have I earned enough for a plane ticket to return home?”
The heat grew so intense that the Memphis Zoo released a statement responding to what it called “misinformation” about its pandas and stating that Ya Ya has “a chronic skin and fur 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 was not mistreated and died of a heart condition failed to quell the outrage. Ya Ya was returned to China on schedule in April when the loan agreement expired and received a celebrity’s welcome at Shanghai’s airport.
The Chinese government, which gave the first pair of pandas — Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling — to the U.S., now leases the pandas for a typical 10-year renewable term. The annual fee ranges from $1 million to $2 million per pair, plus mandatory costs to build and maintain facilities to house the animals. Any cub born to the pandas belongs to the Chinese government but can be leased for an additional fee until mating age.
Over the 50 years of American panda loan agreements, the arrangement has hit 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 issue that was threatening the renewal of the National Zoo’s agreement. The problem was quickly resolved, and the agreement was extended.
“But the situation now is completely different,” said Mr. Ashe, now CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. “What we’re seeing now is tensions between our governments at a much higher level, and they need to be addressed and resolved at that level.”
Observers are holding out hope for that sort of eleventh-hour, high-level intervention.
Mr. Wilder pointed to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco next month as a potential forum for President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping to make headlines by breaking the deadlock.
Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Xie Feng has sounded semi-optimistic in his public statements.
“I will do my utmost to do that, and here, in Aspen, there also will be [pandas],” Mr. Xie said during the Aspen Security Forum in July in Aspen, Colorado.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.