Xi announces two pandas for Atlanta Zoo during US visit: What is China’s panda diplomacy?
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Xi announces two pandas for Atlanta Zoo during US visit: What is China’s panda diplomacy?")
China's First Lady Peng Liyuan, China's President Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump and US First Lady Melania Trump look on during a military review in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 24, 2026. Photograph: (AFP)
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, will soon arrive at Zoo Atlanta, highlighting the role of panda diplomacy in China’s ties with the United States.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday (Sept. 24) announced that two giant pandas will soon arrive at Zoo Atlanta in the United States, following a new conservation agreement announced earlier this year.
"In a few days, two pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, will come to their new home in Zoo Atlanta and meet with the American people," Xi said after arriving at the White House.
China’s panda diplomacy began in 1957 when Beijing gifted a giant panda to the Soviet Union as a gesture of friendship. The practice later developed into a way of lending pandas to other countries as symbols of goodwill and soft power.
Panda diplomacy gained greater prominence after 1972, following the normalisation of China’s ties with the United States and Japan. The pandas remain Chinese property and are returned to China when their agreements end. Several pandas have returned from countries including the United States, Finland and France.
China has also recalled pandas during periods of strained relations with other countries. In January, two popular pandas returned to China from Japan, leaving the country without the animals for the first time in 50 years as ties between the two Asian neighbours came under strain.
Panda twins Lei Lei and Xiao Xiao were transported by truck from Ueno Zoological Gardens in Tokyo, where they were born. Their departure disappointed many Japanese fans who had become attached to the four-year-old pandas.
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US-China panda ties
Panda diplomacy between the United States and China has also seen periods of closer cooperation and rising tensions. It strengthened after US President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China, when Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai gifted Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
However, amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing in 2023 and 2024, China did not renew any panda leases, leading to the repatriation of several pandas.
The situation later began to normalise after Xi fulfilled his promise to send pandas to the United States during the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. Yun Chuan and Xin Bao arrived at the San Diego Zoo in June 2024, followed by Bao Li and Qing Bao at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, in October 2024.
The latest announcement of Ping Ping and Fu Shuang heading to Zoo Atlanta marks another development in the long-running panda diplomacy between the United States and China.
