China will send pandas back to the US

China will send pandas back to the US. This could mean improving diplomatic relations between the two superpowers. Pandas travel to San Diego, California and Washington.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said at a news conference that “major Chinese companies” have signed agreements with the San Diego Zoo.

China has been lending giant pandas to various countries since the 1950s. It is a way for Chinese rulers to strengthen ties with their trading partners. The country hopes that more pandas will be born as a result: the giant panda is an endangered species.

Over the past two years, China has increasingly withdrawn pandas from the United States. In April last year, a panda returned from Memphis, USA Back to China, where he was reportedly abused in Chinese media. When the Washington Zoo's lease expired last November, there was still work to be done. Three giant pandas Back across the Pacific. Only four pandas were left at the zoo in Atlanta, Georgia. The zoo's contract also expires this year: the last pandas currently in the U.S. must be repatriated.

That means for the first time in fifty years there will be no pandas in America. In 1972, during a historic visit to China during the Cold War, then-US President Richard Nixon took home three pandas for the first time.

US President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping had dinner in November. That was the seed of the new Panda deal. Xi later described the pandas as “Representatives of friendship between the American and Chinese people” and said Beijing was willing to pursue what it called “panda diplomacy” with the United States.

“We look forward to working together again to protect the giant panda with relevant countries,” a Chinese ministry spokesman told a press conference today. “It will promote friendship between the American and Chinese people.”

In the past year, there have been tensions between China and the US over trade, espionage and territorial disputes. The two leaders have held several rounds of talks in recent months to ease tensions.