A pair of giant pandas will be sent to the San Diego Zoo in the United States to begin a 10-year collaboration to protect giant pandas, the China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA) said on Saturday. Yun Chuan, male and Xin Bao according to China’s official state news agency Xinhuafemale, have been selected by the China Giant Panda Conservation and Research Center (CCRCGP) and will be accompanied by experienced breeders and veterinarians in the United States.
The CCRCGP has been conducting scientific research collaboration with the San Diego Zoo for over 25 years, with fruitful results in giant panda conservation, breeding, disease control, and public education. In May 2019, two giant pandas returned to China after a multi-year stay at the San Diego Zoo.
The zoo housed giant pandas from 1996 until their departure in 2019, and during that time a total of six pandas were born. Bai Yun and Shi Shi gave birth to the first panda cub to survive in captivity in the United States, and later Bi Yung and Gao Gao gave birth to five more cubs. A significant amount of research was also published and a real connection was made between San Diego scientists and China.
The world’s only panda triplets on their fourth birthday at Guangzhou Zoo, China. He is 10 years old today.
China for more than 1,400 years has created panda diplomacy
A practice dating back to the Tang Dynasty, which ruled from 618 to 907 AD, panda diplomacy – that is, sending pandas as diplomatic gifts – looks set to be back in play in 2024. The Union China’s Wildlife Protection Agency announced that it has finalized deals to lend some of China’s beloved giant pandas to zoos in Spain and the United States.
In 1941, two pandas were sent to the United States just before the country entered World War II. During a ceremony announcing the gift, then-Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek’s wife, Sung Mei-ling, who charmed American audiences, said it was all a way to thank “China’s American friends who have relieved the suffering of our people and bound up our wounds”.
Later, during the 1950s, Chairman Mao was known to always send gifts to China’s allies, which included North Korea and the Soviet Union.
Xiang-Xiang and his mom Xin-Xin at Tokyo Zoo.
Everything … unites peoples
Just two months after US President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to China, which ended more than two decades of tension between the two countries, a pair of 18-month-old pandas arrived in the United States as a gift. Sent by Premier Zhou Enlai, the pandas represented China’s latest use of “panda diplomacy.”
More recently, after the March 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which strained relations between China and Malaysia, the arrival of two of China’s favorite pandas in the same year in Malaysia was seen as a peace offering.
The last time the San Diego Zoo hosted pandas from China it was an incredibly successful program, both in terms of panda conservation efforts and the relationships built with the Chinese counterparts. Everything has come back strongly thanks to China’s scientific approach even though it was at the point of near extinction.
Tender bamboo shoots are a favorite delicacy of pandas.
