‘Envoys of friendship’: Xi Jinping hints that new pandas are on the way to the US
- Gesture by the Chinese leader after talks with President Joe Biden in California raises hopes that more of the beloved bears will soon return to US zoos
- Xi taking up the panda issue shows that ‘he cares about how people in the West think about China’
Just a week after an adorable trio of giant pandas returned to China from Washington’s National Zoo, a comment from Chinese President Xi Jinping is renewing hopes that some new clumsy bears may soon be sent to the United States.
“I … learned that the San Diego Zoo and the Californians very much look forward to welcoming pandas back,” Xi said on Wednesday at a dinner in San Francisco attended by hundreds of American business leaders, hours after he met with US President Joe Biden.
Calling the pandas “envoys of friendship”, Xi said: “We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples.”
The exodus of the beloved pandas has come amid frosty ties between the two nations over tech competition, trade, Taiwan, the Ukraine war and the Middle East crisis.
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Washington National Zoo’s last giant pandas returned to China amid strained US-China ties
The San Diego Zoo returned its charges in 2019. Another giant panda departed the Memphis Zoo earlier this year. And after female Mei Xiang, 25, male Tian Tian, 26, and their three-year-old cub, Xiao Qi Ji, bid farewell to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo last week, Zoo Atlanta is the only place left in the US to see giant pandas. And the lease for those four in Georgia is set to expire next year.
Dennis Wilder of Georgetown University’s Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues, said “Xi’s remarks are really an order to the Chinese to move forward with the negotiations”, noting that China’s conservation organisation and the relevant zoo are parties that do the actual talks.