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Shanghai: When China’s giant pandas Wang Wang and Fu Ni arrived in Australia in 2009, the relationship between Australia and China was blossoming.
Chinese President Hu Jintao had personally offered them during a visit to Sydney, the Chinese international student market was soaring past $20 billion and Chinese giant PetroChina had signed a contract that would deliver gas to China for the next 20 years.
Pandas at Adelaide zoo: Fu Ni on the left, Wang Wang on the right.
Now the future of Wang Wang and Fu Ni in Australia is under threat as negotiations begin to extend their loan to Adelaide Zoo, where they have made their home in the Bamboo Forest next to two red pandas, Ravi and Mishry.
The loans from China are due to expire in 2024 after already being extended by five years.
“We do not know if Wang Wang and Fu Ni will remain at Adelaide Zoo or return to China,” said a Zoos South Australia spokeswoman.
“Formal discussions will soon commence with China Wildlife Conservation Association about our giant pandas and exploring whether a further loan extension is possible.”
China’s then-president Hu Jintao offered a breeding pair of pandas on a 10-year loan in 2007 while visiting Sydney for the APEC summit. He is pictured with John Howard, who was Australian prime minister at the time.Credit: Getty
China has spent eight decades building its panda diplomacy program into a worldwide behemoth that stretches from Helsinki to Adelaide. There are now 63 pandas on exchange in 19 different countries, according to data from China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
Beijing’s ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian described Wang Wang and Fu Ni in January as “ambassadors for people-to-people exchanges” between the two countries, but they are also being increasingly caught in the sharper side of Chinese diplomacy.
In 2005, Taiwan rejected two pandas sent by China named “unity” and “reunion”. In 2011, China sent two pandas to Scotland after Beijing and Edinburgh signed an oil deal.
The Smithsonian National Zoo’s giant panda Mei Xiang is heading home to China mid-November after negotiations to extend its stay broke down. Credit: AP
And there will be no more pandas in the United States next year after Beijing declined loan extension requests from the Smithsonian Institution, which operates the National Zoo, as diplomatic relations between the two superpowers struggle to recover from military threats and hostile economic competition.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrived in Shanghai on Saturday night for the first visit to China by an Australian leader in seven years after half a decade of tension between Beijing and Canberra. The logo for the China International Import Expo, where Albanese will meet with Premier Li Qiang on Sunday, is a giant panda.
The “Jinbao” giant panda mascot welcomes visitors at Shanghai Pudong International Airport.
The Department of Foreign Affairs did not respond to questions about whether Albanese would raise the matter of Wang Wang and Fu Ni in his meetings with President Xi Jinping and Li.
Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have spent the past year stabilising the relationship with China by toning down their rhetoric while maintaining largely the same policy positions as the Coalition.
Wang Wang is the male panda at Adelaide Zoo.
“From a Chinese perspective, sharing the care of such a precious animal strengthens the bonds that China has with its ‘inner circle’ of countries,” said panda diplomacy expert Kathleen Buckingham in research published by Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment.
In their more than a decade at the Adelaide Zoo, Wang Wang and Fu Ni have become major tourist attractions, but they have struggled in their personal lives.
The pair have had at least five unsuccessful mating sessions and four failed artificial inseminations as part of a giant panda breeding program run by the zoo and the China Wildlife Conservation Association.
Fu Ni (pictured) and Wang Wang have failed to breed over the years. Credit: David Mattner
The Australian government pays $1 million a year to rent the pandas from China, and the zoo spends millions more on fertility programs, but pandas are only fertile for 24 to 72 hours once a year, creating a challenge for breeders worldwide and leaving the bear vulnerable to extinction.
Allegations of poor treatment of pandas overseas have also fuelled anger among Chinese people, who are increasingly calling for more pandas to be bred at home as a symbol of national pride.
When photos of a scruffy looking 22-year-old Ya Ya at Memphis Zoo went viral online in April, it triggered a barrage of hostility towards the United States.
“Treating our national treasure with such an attitude is an outright provocation of China,” said one user on Chinese social media site Weibo.
In editorials, Chinese state media tied the treatment of Ya Ya to “Washington is intensifying its containment and suppression of China”.
Photos earlier this year of Ya Ya, a giant panda at the Memphis Zoo, angered Chinese nationals who said he looked poorly treated. Credit: Karen Pulfer Focht/AP Photo
Animal rights groups have long campaigned for governments to stop using animals as gifts for diplomatic purposes.
“They are intelligent and social animals that form close bonds with their families and friends,” said Jason Baker, the Asia vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
“It’s time for governments to stop using pandas, elephants and other animals as political gifts.
“PETA urges that animals be kept in the wild or be sent to natural sanctuaries where they can thrive in their natural habitat and receive the care they deserve.”
Chong Ja Ian of the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore told Singapore’s Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao in April that panda diplomacy was struggling under growing domestic and international pressure.
“Panda diplomacy can no longer have the effect it once did,” he said.
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