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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

China sending pair of pandas to Washington’s National Zoo by end of 2024

  • Planned arrival of rare bears at American capital breathes new life into decades-long conservation partnership amid tense Sino-US ties
  • Public debut date yet to be determined as zoo chief touts the bilateral collaboration’s ‘irrefutable impact’

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Qing Bao, a Washington-bound female giant panda, eats bamboo in her habitat in Sichuan province in China on May 17. Photo: Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute
Holly Chikin Washington
China will send a pair of pandas to Washington by the end of this year, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo said on Wednesday, breathing new life into a decades-long conservation partnership between the two countries.
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The news of giant pandas returning to America’s capital came six months after pandas Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and their cub Xiao Qi Ji left the zoo last year in a departure symbolic of deteriorating Sino-US relations.
China has long been sending the rare members of the bear family to nations overseas as a goodwill gesture meant to build ties in a practice dubbed panda diplomacy.
In 1972, Beijing dispatched its first pair of pandas abroad to Washington after US president Richard Nixon met Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Since then, the lending of giant pandas has come to symbolise US-China comity for the last 50 years.
The Pandas Are Coming!

Each US-bound bear is two years old: Bao Li is a male giant panda whose name means “treasure” and “energetic”, and female Qing Bao’s name means “green treasure”.

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