The tried-and-tested offering came once again on Thursday as Chinese President Xi Jinping announced during his state visit to the U.S. that Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, two giant pandas from a research base in Chengdu, would be lent to Zoo Atlanta in the state of Georgia—but whether this so-called panda diplomacy remains as welcome as it has over the decades is less clear, eliciting mixed reactions in 2026.
China claims ownership of nearly all the giant pandas in the world, even their offspring, and controls who receives them. Beijing eventually shifted from gifting giant pandas to leasing them to other countries in 1984 as the animal’s population dwindled, but the practice continued and spread to other nations like Austria, Canada, and Malaysia. China regularly considers loaning pandas an act of goodwill—even when the host nation typically foots the bill of about $1 million annually for a pair.
“No other animal has been turned into a symbol to the extent that pandas have been,” says Czeslaw Tubilewicz, a senior lecturer at Adelaide University.
But China’s transformation from a developing economy to one of the world’s superpowers has also raised questions about whether the gesture of sending giant pandas still works. China is massively different from how it used to be in the 1970s, and is currently embroiled in a wide range of issues, not only with the U.S., but also with other countries, which makes categorizing it neatly as a friend or foe less easy.
“No one cares about pandas when national security or geostrategic interests come into play,” Tubilewicz added.
Falling for pandas
But while China’s practice of leasing pandas gives some people warm feelings, it makes others hot with anger. Conservationists and animal advocates have argued against using pandas as geopolitical pawns. Following the South Korea-China Summit earlier this year, the countries’ respective environmental officials discussed additional giant panda loans. But a Korean animal rights group slammed the move, saying that the creatures “are not beings born for human entertainment or interstate friendship.”
“The symbolism was still dominant in the 1970s,” Chong said. “It’s just that, given the lack of information, given the environment of that time, the symbolism probably got a lot more traction before than today.”
“Affection for pandas does not automatically translate into support for Chinese government policies,” Yu Tao, associate professor in Chinese Studies at the University of Western Australia, tells TIME. “Its more realistic contribution is to sustain public goodwill and opportunities for cooperation. The strongest case for panda diplomacy is that it gives people something they want to preserve in a relationship otherwise defined pretty much by disputes.”
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