WASHINGTON – Wearing a “I Love Pandas” t-shirt and clutching a panda-covered diary, Kelsey Lambert bubbled with pleasure as she glimpsed the true factor. She and her mom, Alison, had made a particular commute from San Antonio, Texas, simply to observe the National Zoo’s hairy rock stars casually munching bamboo and rolling round at the grass.
“It felt completely amazing,” Kelsey, age 10, mentioned Friday. “My mom has always promised she would take me one day. So we had to do it now that they’re going away.”
The National Zoo’s 3 large pandas — Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji — are set to go back to China in early December with out a public indicators that the 50-year previous trade settlement struck by way of former President Richard Nixon will proceed.
National Zoo officers have remained tight-lipped concerning the potentialities of renewing or extending the settlement, and repeated makes an attempt to achieve remark at the state of the negotiations didn’t obtain a reaction. However, the general public stance of the zoo has been decidedly pessimistic — treating those last months as the top of an technology. The zoo simply completed a weeklong birthday celebration known as Panda Palooza: A Giant Farewell.
The possible finish of the National Zoo’s panda technology comes amid what veteran China-watchers say is a better pattern. With diplomatic tensions operating prime between Beijing and a quantity of Western governments, China seems to be progressively pulling again its pandas from a couple of Western zoos as their agreements expire.
Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, known as the fashion “punitive panda diplomacy,” noting that two different American zoos have misplaced their pandas in recent times, whilst zoos in Scotland and Australia are going through an identical departures with out a indicators of their mortgage agreements being renewed.
Beijing recently lends out 65 pandas to 19 international locations thru “cooperative research programs” with a mentioned venture to higher give protection to the prone species. The pandas go back to China after they achieve previous age and any cubs born are despatched to China round age 3 or 4.
The San Diego zoo returned its pandas in 2019 and the ultimate endure on the Memphis, Tennessee zoo went house previous this yr. The departure of the National Zoo’s bears would imply that the one large pandas left in America are on the Atlanta Zoo — and that mortgage settlement expires past due subsequent yr.
Wilder mentioned the Chinese in all probability may well be “trying to send a signal.”
He cited a litany of Chinese-American flashpoints: sanctions imposed by the U.S. government on prominent Chinese citizens and officials; restrictions on the import of Chinese semiconductors; accusations that Chinese-made fentanyl is flooding American cities; suspicion over Chinese ownership of the social media platform TikTok; and the uproar early this year over the Chinese balloons floating over America.
Beijing, Wilder said, is convinced that “NATO and the United States are lining up against China.”
The panda-related tension has even spilled into the hallways of the U.S. Senate. Last week, Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman complained about China buying up American farmland and added, “I mean, they’re taking back our pandas. You know, we should take back all their farmland.”
That animosity has been at least partially shared by the Chinese people, where anti-American sentiments are on the rise. Those sentiments developed into a perfect panda storm earlier this year when Le Le, a male panda on loan to the zoo in Memphis, died suddenly in February at the age of 24. Pandas generally live 15 to 20 years in the wild, while those in human care often live to be around 30.
Le Le’s unexpected death prompted an explosion on Chinese social media platforms like Weibo, with widespread allegations that the Memphis zoo had mistreated the bear and its female companion, Ya Ya. The campaign gained intensity when photos circulated on the Internet of Ya Ya looking dirty and gaunt (by panda standards) with patchy fur.
An on-line petition on Change.org demanded Ya Ya be returned in an instant, alleging malnourishment and deprivation of correct hospital therapy. Slogans corresponding to “the panda’s life matters” surfaced in China’s social media in conjunction with emotional memes pleading with government to rescue the endure. One specific meme depicts a miserable-looking Ya Ya gazing at a plane flying overhead with the caption: “Mama, I have worked away from home for 20 years. Have I earned enough for a plane ticket to return home?”
The heat grew so intense that the Memphis Zoo released a statement responding to what it called “misinformation” about its pandas and stating that Ya Ya has “a chronic skin and fur condition” that “makes her hair look thin and patchy,” and Le Le died of natural causes.
Even an official Chinese scientific delegation that visited Memphis and announced that Le Le was not mistreated and died of a heart condition failed to quell the outrage. Ya Ya was returned to China on schedule in April when the loan agreement expired and received a celebrity’s welcome at Shanghai’s airport.
The Chinese government, which gifted the first pair of pandas — Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling — to the U.S., now leases the pandas out for a typical 10-year renewable term. The annual fee ranges from $1 million to $2 million per pair, plus mandatory costs to build and maintain facilities to house the animals. Any cub born to the pandas belongs to the Chinese government, but can be leased for an additional fee until it reaches mating age.
Over the 50 years of American panda loan agreements, the arrangement has hit more than one rough patch. In 2010, Daniel Ashe, then head of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, traveled to China to help resolve a technical bureaucratic issue that was threatening the renewal of the National Zoo’s agreement. The problem was quickly resolved and the agreement extended.
“But the situation now is completely different,” said Ashe, now CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. “What we’re seeing now is tensions between our governments at a much higher level, and they need to be addressed and resolved at that level.”
Observers are holding out hope that exactly this sort of 11th-hour high-level intervention will come through. Wilder pointed to the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in November as a potential forum for President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping to make headlines by breaking the deadlock. And Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Xie Feng has sounded semi-optimistic in his public statements.
“I will do my utmost to do that, and here, in Aspen, there also will be (pandas),” Xie said during the Aspen Security Forum in July in Aspen, Colorado.
But for now, panda-philes of all ages are making pilgrimages to Washington for a last glimpse at the bears. At the zoo last Friday, amid the chatter of children, was an adult couple with a baby on the way — each wearing matching panda-ears headbands. Colleen Blue and John Nungesser came from outside Philadelphia to see the pandas; this was Blue’s third time.
“I’ve been obsessed with them since I was little. I used to just bury people in panda facts,” she said.
Nungesser nodded, adding, “On our first date, she went on and on about pandas.”
Blue said she broke into tears and “had a temper tantrum” when she found out that Washington’s pandas would be leaving. The couple is already making plans, after their baby is born, to take the infant to see the pandas in Atlanta next summer before they leave.
And Alison Lambert, Kelsey’s mom, said she remains optimistic that both sides will work out an agreement simply because it’s mutually beneficial. And if they don’t, Kelsey is already developing Plan B.
“We could always fly to China,” she said. “That works, too.”
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Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein and Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.