The tried-and-tested offering came once again on Thursday as Chinese President Xi Jinping announced during his state visit to the U.S. that Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, two giant pandas from a research base in Chengdu, would be lent to Zoo Atlanta in the state of Georgia—but whether this so-called panda diplomacy remains as welcome as it has over the decades is less clear, eliciting mixed reactions in 2026.
lørdag 26. september 2026
Has China’s Panda Diplomacy Lost Its Charm? It’s Not So Black-and-White
“This move is a diplomatic all-timer,” Santi Ruiz, a policy-focused writer for the Institute for Progress and editorial team member at AI company Anthropic, posted on X. “It's like Messi cutting inside. You know it’s coming. It doesn’t matter how many times they run it. You’re getting those pandas, and you’ll like it.”
The tried-and-tested offering came once again on Thursday as Chinese President Xi Jinping announced during his state visit to the U.S. that Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, two giant pandas from a research base in Chengdu, would be lent to Zoo Atlanta in the state of Georgia—but whether this so-called panda diplomacy remains as welcome as it has over the decades is less clear, eliciting mixed reactions in 2026.
The tried-and-tested offering came once again on Thursday as Chinese President Xi Jinping announced during his state visit to the U.S. that Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, two giant pandas from a research base in Chengdu, would be lent to Zoo Atlanta in the state of Georgia—but whether this so-called panda diplomacy remains as welcome as it has over the decades is less clear, eliciting mixed reactions in 2026.