TOI Correspondent from Washington: The United States and China may disagree about tariffs, technology, Taiwan and the future of the world order. But there is apparently one subject on which they can find common ground: everybody loves pandas.Two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, are arriving in Atlanta on Monday, just days after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington. Their arrival adds a furry footnote to a summit heavy on symbolism and somewhat lighter on earth-shaking breakthroughs. The pandas are headed for a 10-year stay at Zoo Atlanta under a conservation agreement.They travelled in considerably greater comfort than most travelers. Handlers packed steamed corn buns, bamboo shoots and carrots for their 15-hour FedEx flight. Experienced American keepers accompanied them. The Atlanta zoo upgraded their quarters and arranged a steady supply of locally grown bamboo. A little more tantrum from Beijing and liveried waiters with silver platters could be standing byChina, of course, is the undisputed grandmaster of this branch of statecraft. In 1972, after Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing, First Lady Pat Nixon is said to have mentioned her affection for pandas to Premier Zhou Enlai. Two months later, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing arrived at Washington’s National Zoo. The Americans reciprocated with two musk oxen, Milton and Matilda, now long forgotten.The panda relationship subsequently became more sophisticated – and more expensive. China stopped giving pandas away in the 1980s and shifted to long-term loans, generally for conservation and research, with cubs born abroad eventually returning to China.Washington’s panda romance has therefore gone through several seasons: Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing; then Tian Tian and Mei Xiang; their famous cubs Tai Shan, Bao Bao and Bei Bei; the tearful departure of the family in 2023; and the arrival in 2024 of Bao Li and Qing Bao. The Smithsonian says the new agreement runs through 2034.The spirit animating panda diplomacy is obvious. Pandas are cute, photogenic, rare and almost aggressively non-threatening. Put two world leaders beside a trade dispute, and everybody looks grim; put two pandas beside the same dispute and suddenly it’s all cute and cuddly.China is hardly alone in understanding the diplomatic value of charismatic fauna. India actually had elephant diplomacy before pandas became a diplomatic instrument. Veteran diplomats recall Jawaharlal Nehru sent a baby elephant named Indira to Tokyo in 1949 after receiving hundreds of letters from Japanese children asking for one. He subsequently sent elephants to Berlin and to many other countries including China, the Soviet Union, the United States, Turkey, Iran, Canada and the Netherlands. But India simply did not build a durable, institutionalised animal-diplomacy industry around them.Perhaps that was partly wisdom. Unlike pandas, Indian elephants are social, intelligent, enormously demanding animals whose welfare becomes complicated once diplomacy ends and the photo opportunity is over. A 2024 examination of the practice, prompted by the plight of an elephant gifted to India by Zimbabwe, highlighted this problem precisely: diplomatic animals can be separated from herds, habitats and familiar environments for the convenience of human relations.Besides, neither pandas and elephants — nor koalas and platypuses from Australia, horses from Mongolia, and akita dogs from Japan, all of which were deployed in the case of diplomacy — were consulted about their assignment. Humans have spent centuries deciding that critters make excellent ambassadors without ever bothering to ask the envoys.Why? Because animals, unlike ambassadors, cannot resign their postings, request asylum or leak the contents of their diplomatic cables. And perhaps that is why they make such remarkably good diplomats. They never complain, never contradict the communique, never hold a press conference and — most importantly — never ask what happened to the promised breakthrough.
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