The ancient Chinese read the future in tea leaves. But to read the paths of Chinese diplomacy, it doesn’t hurt to resort to bamboo leaves. Those who devour every day, by the dozens of kilos, each of the panda bears donated by Beijing to selected countries.
The thermometer of this “panda diplomacy” has recently marked freezing temperatures in several English-speaking countries. In spring, a panda on display at the Memphis Zoo was repatriated by Beijing authorities after a campaign on Chinese networks about its bad appearance and supposed unhappiness in the land of Elvis Presley.
It could be an anecdote, but it is not. Before the end of the year, it will be the turn of the three pandas at the National Zoo in Washington. For a few months, American children will still be able to admire some specimens of their favorite animal in Atlanta. But these will also have to be transferred to China next year, as will happen with the two who live in Australia. Even earlier, in December, the last two pandas in British territory will be evacuated from the Edinburgh Zoo.
None of this is coincidental, as his transfer was not, at the time. In the latter case, coinciding with Petrochina’s entry into the capital of a Scottish refinery in 2011.
Now, the extension – or its absence – is an unequivocal sign of the state of bilateral relations. It has been this way for decades. Actually, for centuries. In fact, Empress Wu was already sending pandas to her counterpart in Japan in the first millennium. Which would show that this has never been an act of weakness, but rather something more akin to a fist wrapped in stuffed animals.
In the mid-1980s, Deng Xiao Ping changed the policy of giving pandas as a sign of friendship. Since then, these bears have not been given. They are only lent, on the condition that their complicated offspring – in captivity, the males lose their sexual appetite – are eventually returned to China, to increase the number of 1,800 specimens in the wild (against the 600 that are not).
There are those who criticize that a State – worse, a political party – can claim ownership of an animal species. There are also those who refer to the results: during the last decade, the panda was reclassified as vulnerable, after having been endangered. The first to remember that the Chinese Communist Party has not invented “panda diplomacy” are its staunchest enemies, on the other side of the Strait of Formosa. Chang Kai Chek, they say in Taiwan, was already rewarding his international allies with bears in the 1930s.
However, journalistic convention wants the boom to come from Nixon’s visit to Mao in 1972. The American president’s wife returned with two endearing panda bears, and the United States reciprocated with two musk oxen.
Despite the harmony at that time between the dictatorships of Spain and Taiwan, Franco reestablished diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1973. Five years later, Juan Carlos and Sofía, new kings of Spain, would not return from China empty-handed and A pair of pandas took up residence at the Madrid Zoo.
Although the real media explosion came later, with Chu-Lin, the first panda born by artificial insemination. Madrid had found his alternative to Snowflake. Since then, several pandas have been born there in captivity. Some of them have returned to China, as stipulated. But the continuity of the pandas in Madrid does not seem to be threatened at the moment.
It should be said that even the two pandas from Taiwan were given by Beijing, in a conciliatory gesture. Therefore, outside of China, the only panda outside its control is Xin .
Significantly, in Singapore, where the recently loaned pair of pandas live in princely conditions, the agreement has just been extended by China. Panda diplomacy is sinuous, for those who do not know how to read black on white.
