The winner in China’s panda diplomacy: the pandas themselves

WASHINGTON (AP) — China’s panda diplomacy may have one true winner: the pandas themselves.

Decades after Beijing began working with zoos in the U.S. and Europe to protect the species, the number of giant pandas in the wild has risen to 1,900, up from about 1,100 in the 1980s, and they are no longer considered “at risk” of extinction but have been given the safer status of “vulnerable.”

Americans can take some credit for this accomplishment, because conserving the species is not purely a Chinese undertaking but a global effort where U.S. scientists and researchers have played a critical role.

“We carry out scientific and research cooperation with San Diego Zoo and the zoo in Washington in the U.S., as well as European countries. They are more advanced in aspects such as veterinary medicine, genetics and vaccination, and we learn from them,” said Zhang Hemin, chief expert at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in the southwestern Chinese city of Ya’an.

Zhang spoke to journalists during a recent government-organized media tour at the Ya’an Bifengxia Panda Base, home to 66 pandas that lolled about and chomped on stalks of bamboo in a tranquil setting rich with vegetation.

China’s giant panda loan program has long been known as a tool of Beijing’s soft-power diplomacy, but its conservation significance could have been an important reason Beijing is renewing its cooperation with U.S. zoos and sending new pairs of pandas at a time of otherwise sour relations.

A pair of pandas that arrived at the San Diego Zoo in June will debut to the public after several weeks of acclimation. Another pair will come to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo later this year, and a third pair will settle in the San Francisco Zoo