House bill targets ‘panda diplomacy’

Lawmaker: Sending China a message

A Republican congressman questions whether panda diplomacy needs to change and aims to send a message to China while it hosts the Olympic Games.

Fifty years ago this month, Chairman Mao zedong made President Richard Nixon a promise: He would send two giant pandas to the United States.

Mao made this proclamation in February 1972, when Nixon visited China to begin a historic rapprochement. The announcement stirred up what The New York Times described at the time as “polite warfare” among American zoos angling to host the pandas, and ushered in 50 years of panda diplomacy between China and the United States.

Panda diplomacy, in its current form, works like this: China loans pandas to a zoo in the United States or another country, and the zoo pays an annual fee — usually $500,000 to $1 million each — to keep the pandas for at least a few years.

The animals serve as goodwill ambassadors for China while, experts said, softening the country’s authoritarian image and drawing attention away from its record of human rights abuses. But now, a bill in Congress is taking aim at this arrangement — specifically, the stipulation that panda cubs born abroad must be shipped to China within a few years.

“We do need to think outside of the box in terms of dealing with their aggression,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said, referring to the Chinese government.

The legislation faces a narrow path in the House, which is controlled by Democrats, and it was not clear how much of an effect it might have, given that China arranges panda loans directly with zoos.

The bill cites China’s threats against Taiwan, its suppression of dissent in Hong Kong and its “crimes against humanity” against the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority, in the northwestern Xinjiang region.

The Chinese Embassy responded to a request for comment by referring to a statement that the National zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, gave to The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C.

“We have nothing but success with our giant panda program,” a zoo spokesperson said.