By Issy Ronald, Steven Jiang, CNN
(CNN) — Two giant pandas have left China on a flight bound for their new home at a zoo in Atlanta, where they will live on loan from the Chinese government, the latest episode in Beijing’s long tradition of using “panda diplomacy” to strengthen ties with other countries.
They departed Chengdu, in southwestern China, in the early hours of Sunday morning local time, China’s state news agency Xinhua said. The flight came just a day after Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington concluded.
During that visit, which was intended to address rising tensions between the world’s two superpowers, Xi and US President Donald Trump extended a trade truce and agreed to establish an AI hotline between the two countries.
Loaning pandas has long been a tool of Chinese diplomacy.
“The giant panda has been an envoy of friendship between the Chinese and Americans,” Xi said on Thursday, referencing the half-century in which pandas lived in US zoos on loan from the Chinese government. That tradition was started by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1972, shortly after Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit China following the Communist Party’s rise to power in 1949.
One of the pandas bound for Atlanta even shares the same name – Ping Ping, meaning peace – as the first ever panda Mao gifted to the Soviet Union in 1957. He was born on March 17, 2020, has large black patches around his eyes and is especially good at climbing trees, according to China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
The other panda, Fu Shuang, meaning double blessings, was born seven months later on October 18. She has a small tuft of fur on the top of her head, a slightly protruding forehead and finds food very easily, the administration said.
Zookeepers at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding selected the pair after considering their age, health, genetics and personality.
“They should be docile and like each other, and hopefully be able to mate naturally,” the park’s deputy director Li Mingxi told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
They are scheduled to arrive in Atlanta early on Sunday morning. The zoo has hosted several pandas before. Another pair, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, had seven offspring there between 2006 and 2016 before returning to Chengdu.
Their destination – Zoo Atlanta – earlier in the year said they would be “delighted and honored” to welcome the two pandas.
A banner displayed at the zoo on Saturday read “The future home of Ping Ping and Fu Shuang.”
A Zoo Atlanta representative said the facility would not share information about Ping Ping and Fu Shuang’s planned arrival date and declined to comment further.
Panda diplomacy has offered some relief from the tensions increasingly shaping the US-China relationship in recent years, as the two countries compete in an AI arms race and engage in a spiraling trade war.
Two giant pandas arrived in San Diego in June 2024, the first time China allowed new pandas to travel to the US in more than two decades, before a second pair travelled to Washington’s National Zoo later that year.
In preparation for the move, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang have been quarantined for a month with a roster of live-in carers, Li said. The pandas have been trained for their long flight too, becoming used to their crate and loud noises.
CNN’s Xiaoqian Lin, Farida Elsebai, Rebekah Riess and Mike Valerio contributed reporting.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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