China to resume ‘Panda Diplomacy’ with US and Europe, what does this mean?
China tightens grip on stocks with net sale ban at open, close The first pair of pandas — a male and a female — could arrive in San Diego by late summer, officials at the zoo told the Associated Press. China is also discussing renewing its cooperation with Washington, D.C.’s National Zoo and Austria’s Schönbrunn Zoo, according to the embassy.
Restoring its decades-old panda diplomacy marks China’s latest effort to improve relations with the West, especially the US. Hopes that the iconic animals — which only live in the wild in China — might be sent back to the US rose after US President Joe Biden met Chinese leader Xi Jinping last November in California.
Also Read | An online dump of Chinese hacking documents offers a rare window into pervasive state surveillance Xi declared at the time that China was “ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen friendly ties between our peoples." But it wasn’t immediately clear when that process would get underway or whether it would come in time to stop the departure of the few bears remaining in the US. Officials at Washington’s National Zoo last year returned their three giant pandas — Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and Xiao Qi Ji — when the loan contracts with China weren’t renewed.
That was the first time the facility — which had completed a $50 million overhaul of the Asia Trail enclosure where the pandas lived — was left without a single panda in decades. Also Read | Russia outsmarts western sanctions — and China is paying attention The Washington Zoo originally received a pair of pandas as a gift from Beijing following President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, a landmark event
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