China's "panda diplomacy" is drawing renewed attention with Japan's first zero giant panda moment in over half a century approaching, amid an intensifying Sino-U.S. rivalry that could provide an incentive for Beijing to stabilize its oft-strained ties with Tokyo.
China's decisions on leasing the bear species abroad are usually revealed in high-level bilateral talks. Foreign affairs experts say a new loan may be announced late fall this year during a possible visit by a Chinese political leader to Japan, though they doubt the gesture will carry the same diplomatic weight as it once did.
Since the first black-and-white animal arrived in Japan in 1972 to commemorate the normalization of diplomatic ties, Chinese pandas have become beloved by the Japanese public, bringing major economic benefits as tourist attractions.
The two governments have embraced the bamboo-munching iconic animal's role as a symbol of friendship. China last sent pandas to Japan in February 2011, based on a deal struck at a meeting between then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Chinese President Hu Jintao in Tokyo in May 2008.
Currently, Japan is home to six pandas, all of which were born domestically but owned by China. Four at the Adventure World leisure complex in the western Japanese town of Shirahama will be handed over to China next Saturday, ahead of the expiration of their loan period in August.
The other two at Tokyo's Ueno Zoological Gardens are also due to return to China next February.
Emi Mifune, a Komazawa University professor well-versed in Chinese diplomacy, believes China will rent out new pandas instead to Japan as Beijing is "in the middle of an escalating confrontation with the United States and needs to mend relations" with Tokyo.
China's relationship with the United States has been cooling in recent years, as Washington maintains a hard-line stance toward China, renewed by tariff-fueled trade salvos by President Donald Trump who returned to the White House in January.
She also said Beijing's agreement with Tokyo in late May to begin procedures to resume importing Japanese marine products indicates that China is making visible efforts to improve the relationship, something that a new panda allocation would support.
China imposed a ban on Japanese seafood imports in August 2023 in opposition to the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea.
The Asian neighbors have long been at loggerheads over historical and territorial issues, including a dispute over the Tokyo-controlled, Beijing-claimed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. China's increasing military activities in the Indo-Pacific region have only stoked tensions.
China has long used the panda as a tool of diplomatic outreach and goodwill toward various nations, including the United States, Russia, Australia and South Korea among others.
With an eye on fostering "an atmosphere of improving bilateral ties," China may announce a new panda loan, perhaps during the next meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Mifune speculated.
Japan hopes to host a summit with China and South Korea later this year in Tokyo, and Ishiba-Li talks are expected to take place on the sidelines.
During a China trip as leader of a business delegation in early June, Yohei Kono, the former Japanese House of Representatives speaker, met with Li and floated the idea of the high-ranking Chinese official bringing pandas with him to Japan.
While calling on Japan to promote cooperation to address "challenges posed to the world," such as "U.S. tariff measures," Li told Kono he attaches "great importance" to the panda request as "an important proposal," according to a delegation member.
However, on Sept. 3 China will mark 80 years since it declared victory in its 1937-1945 War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, making diplomatic outreach in the approaching period challenging, Mifune said.
Mifune also pointed out that China may be unwilling to send pandas to Adventure World in Shirahama during the tenure of the town's pro-Taiwan Mayor Yasuhiro Oe, who took office in May last year in a move that might have led to the four panda's repatriation ahead of schedule.
Oe, a former House of Councillors member, has deep ties with Taiwan, with which the Japanese government only maintains unofficial relations.
China sees the self-ruled democratic island as a breakaway province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.
Adventure World has engaged in a collaborative project to breed the animal, now classified as "vulnerable" on the global list of at-risk species, with China since 1994.
Masaki Ienaga, a professor at Tokyo Woman's Christian University, said that China has used pandas not as a tool to demand other nations "give ground" on bilateral issues, but as a signal that the attitude toward Beijing in the recipient nation is "right and friendly."
"Even if China were to give Japan some pandas, it would not mean that Japan has to do a lot of things for it," but how the Japanese public reacts to the arrival of new pandas will matter to Beijing, he said.
Ienaga is also skeptical that a new panda loan will have any tangible impact on the Japanese government's diplomatic posture toward China or Japanese public opinion about its neighbor.
"Japanese society no longer really looks at pandas through a political lens," as opposed to in 1972 when the animals were accepted "genuinely as a symbol of friendship," Ienaga added.
© KYODO
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TaiwanIsNotChina
An adult country would not use wildlife for political purposes.
kurisupisu
And all a panda wants is a stable fresh supply of bamboo shoots…
MarkX
I guess they are cute, but I can’t understand the way people get so emotionally attached to these animals. Especially here in Japan! Was watching the news a while back and the legion of fans at both the zoo and then Haneda airport to watch their plane take off was amazing and a bit scary!
The Trees
MarkX, yes, the phenomenon of some people’s deep emotional attachment to animals is indeed interesting, such as to pandas in this case and to other animals such as whales and dolphins. Emotional responses to animals that can cause various human reactions from overly effusive “kawaii”s to high seas terrorism. Odd indeed how animals get brought into human politics.
Abe234
Pandas really do t need to be in a zoo. And we’re stupid enough to lease a Panda from China. It’s not like we go leasing tigers from, India or Russia. Or Lions from Africa and I’m not sure a Zoo is thee best way to preserve these animals. As is often portrayed. Personally I think the BBC nature shows has done more to raise awareness about extinction and environmental issues than any zoo. Keep the pandas in China, that’ll help China, and help the pandas. If you wanna improve you’re relationship…… like any relationship that starts with listening and talking and stop raising nationalism into everything.
OssanAmerica
While there are other nations that "lend out" their indigenous animals, only China does so for political and diplomatic purposes. And they top it off by demanding the panda gets a Chinese name. The world should stop letting China play this game and let them keep them.
Garlic eater
The panda should be put in a mock Public Security Bureau detention facility as a message to China that the world knows about the continuing Chinese government efforts at stifling of dissent.
elephant200
The world should stop letting China play this game and let them keep them.
Never have seen such a narrow minded remarks from a man. If someone don't feel interested to see Pandas, he or she is not required to go there to see them !
elephant200
Showing the lovely animals like Pandas to children is much better than showing nuclear aircraft carriers and warplanes to children. The American occupiers love opening their warships for public inspections to boast their war promotion event or coverup their image of defeats from Afghanistan.
Do they know what is shame? Oh wait, they are shameless enough!
elephant200
The panda should be put in a mock Public Security Bureau detention facility as a message to China
Perhaps America has no more animals worth for showing to children. Their hunters shot dead almost all the wildlife in North America forests. I pity them.
Perhaps some US cities still worth for visitors visiting of U.S. for showing the abusive using of drugs and the homeless of being junkies.
grc
OssanAmerica - you’re right, it’s unacceptable that one country should tell another what to do. Shame on those other countries for meekly obeying
Garlic eater
What does America have to do with this? This is a story about Chinese pandas in Japan.
Also, aren't pandas endangered?
Also, the PBS exists, and the Chinese government's stifling of dissent is widely known. That's not propaganda, it's documented fact. This panda diplomacy is a facade to distract the gullible. We need more protest against human rights violations, not less. That's not anti-Chinese, it is driven precisely out of concern for the Chinese.
Garlic eater
PSB not PBS
elephant200
We need more protest against human rights violations, not less. That's not anti-Chinese.
You should have to tell the Israel govt. first, their daily/hourly violation of human rights in Gaza and West bank. The Chinese govt. is no where near violation of human rights as that propaganda channel PBS has described!
elephant200
Panda is Panda, China is China, the Chinese government is the Chinese government. I don't see any connection that animals has to do with politics. Just like the star and stripes, flags made in China for exports, it has a political issue in America, I really don't get it.
Unless some people is very jealous of China being a world power. Are you sincerely believes China has alot to gratitudes the United States?
Don't express angers at the Pandas, they have no idea of human world at all !
Garlic eater
@elephant200
What do you have against the Chinese that you would be unwilling to stand up for them? Don't you care about some of the reports by multiple credible sources such as the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR), Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International on what the Chinese PSB are doing? I don't want to recite their findings here because it is too shocking to print, but you can find it yourself. That's good enough reason to be concerned, and to be moved to protest. There's nothing anti-Chinese about that at all.
deanzaZZR
No pandas for you, Japan. Japanese are free to travel to the panda sanctuaries around Chengdu, Sichuan. Enjoy some delicious, spicy food while you are there.
JboneInTheZone
Have you ever met a boy? Every single one thinks aircraft carriers and warplanes are cooler than pandas
JboneInTheZone
The CCP killed 50 million people. That’s is the most deaths caused by a government in world history. You’re right that the human rights violations are no where near what PBS described. It’s much, much worse
Garlic eater
Then they shouldn't be sent as emissaries.
quercetum
I’m quite upset we can’t name the panda Kana or Keisuke.
The age-old grievance: “Why can’t we keep the pandas and name them Greg?” As if geopolitics were a neighborhood pet adoption scheme.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the sheer indignation—China lends out one of its most iconic creatures, flies it first class, feeds it 40kg of bamboo per day, and the scandal is… the name is in Chinese? Shocking. Next you’ll tell me the Eiffel Tower is French.
quercetum
From pandas to parrots, you’re just parroting enormous, unsourced numbers as if they’ve just tumbled down from Mount Objective Fact—well, that’s certainly one way to demonstrate your research chops. Who needs footnotes when outrage will do?
And let’s not forget we were talking about pandas. Fluffy, bamboo-munching mascots of soft power. If your argument veers from the geopolitics of bear-based diplomacy into broad-brush historical catastrophism without a blink, it might be worth asking: are you debating or auditioning for a conspiracy podcast?
quercetum
The Americans, bless them, have turned panda diplomacy into performance art—part protest theatre, part adolescent tantrum. And all the while mistaking taxidermy for policy.”
Certain voices in the West have now proposed placing a Chinese panda in a mock detention facility—apparently as a form of protest against Beijing’s domestic policies. Truly, nothing says “geopolitical savvy” like imprisoning an endangered species to own the authoritarians.
The symbolism is breathtaking: a rotund, herbivorous bear—renowned for its peaceful disposition and disinterest in literally anything but bamboo—is to be shackled in a faux Public Security Bureau cell, presumably while Western staffers shout Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the gift shop loudspeakers.
Too much trouble don’t you think? Easier to just go back to busting bunkers.
quercetum
No that would be practicing authoritarianism telling Japan what they can or cannot humbly request.
If pandas aren’t permitted political pretensions, perhaps they should stay paddocked in Peking, not paraded across the planet with plush passports and preposterous fanfare.
deanzaZZR
Maybe China will give a (small) discount if the newly born panda in Japan is named Taro. It's worth trying, I guess, to please the American Weebs living in Japan.
Garlic eater
@quercetum
What does this have to do with America? It's the Chinese who are being tracked down and detained by the PSB. And both the UN and international human rights organizations have reported on it. Americans are just one voice of the many.
Also, I like your poetry. But presumably political prisoners prefer protest to poetical proclamation.
elephant200
The Japanese loves pandas and they must loves this animal crazily.Because this animal represents China and the goodwill from the Chinese. It is a sacred thing of sino Japanese diplomacy.
Otherwise if the Panda is unhappy or upset for being insulted, that will be a very terrible consequences. The most likely is China sanctions rare earths, critical metals and powerful magnets to Japan as exactly as what China is sanctioning America now. You won't see China sending Pandas to United States anymore because there is a trade war ongoing, that's why Japan must treating the Pandas from China as VIP. That matters the security and prosperity between the two countries!
USNinJapan2
Pandas suck. Absolutely worthless from a natural selection standpoint and the ultimate modern day white elephant.
Raymond Larabie
I think we should embrace the lesser panda (red panda). They're easier to acquire and way cuter imo...like a Temu panda.
ian
That will be a strong message indeed, would speak volumes about anyone who does that.
Not surprised you thought of it.
Starbucks
Propaganda Panda.
elephant200
Pandas suck. Absolutely worthless....
For the Americans who values : Drugs, Guns, Lust , Greeds were their culture, the above remarks is very tasteless but unsurprising.
The Americans is hearing one message from China only. No rare earths and critical metals will exports to America. This is the language they must understood, the Pandas are the animals they never have an idea!
carpslidy
It's such a silly policy
If Australia decided every koala in the world was the property of Australia people would laugh
garypen
It's such dumb behavior. Just let Japan keep the pandas that were born here. Why put the animals through the stress of flights and acclimating to new homes? That applies to both the China-bound pandas and the new ones that would be sent here. It's ridiculous.
deanzaZZR
Trust the market or are you some sort of socialist fiend?