How panda bears are a symbol of friendship
Why countries call it panda diplomacy
Every week, I look for positive and engaging stories to share with my curious readers. In this week’s story on the ‘Lighter Side’, I thought I’d write to you about why this short statement from China’s leaders brought relief to leaders across the world.
The short statement was - ‘we are getting ready to send a giant panda to California’
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Back to our story for the week about pandas! So, to tell a good story, one should always go back to the very beginning.
More than 1300 years ago…..
Long long time ago, China was ruled by kings and queens from the Tang dynasty. The empress then was a charming and intelligent person called Wu Zeitan. China would often fight with its neighbours. War meant a lot of death (and sometimes starvation). The Empress decided that she wanted to establish friendly relations with one of its neighbours - Japan. So she shot off a letter (written on a piece of parchment) about how she did not have any quarrels with the Japanese emperor. As a gesture of goodwill, she bundled along a gift to the emperor. She sent him two cute and cuddly panda bears from her kingdom.
China has long followed this tradition of sending pandas along to countries it wants to be friends with. This is also called the ‘panda diplomacy’.
Soon after the Second World War….
The leaders of the United States (US) and China found plenty of reasons to quarrel with each other. The US claimed that it was mighty and strong, and it was a wonderful country, because it was a democracy (a place where people voted and elected their leaders). The US declared that China’s leaders were unfair to their people, because they did not allow the Chinese people to vote and elect their leader. Secretly, the US was afraid that China would use its armies to invade their neighbours in Asia and conquer them. This would make China really strong.
China, on the other hand, was very wary of the US because the Americans had sent their armies and invaded one of China’s neighbours (a country called Vietnam). So both countries had a standoff for more than twenty years. While they did not openly fight wars with each other, they were not exactly friends either.
The US gets a panda bear…
But, a few decades later, the US decided to end its war in Vietnam (China’s neighbour). China was also struggling with poverty. China felt that it made sense for it to start trading with the US and become a big fat rich country, once again. So the two countries decided to become friends. The leaders of both countries met each other, shook hands and smiled. China sent the US a pair of panda bears in 1972. You know why!
People in the US were mighty kicked about the cute and cuddly mascots that had arrived from China. They stood in queues for hours outside the US zoo enclosure to watch the panda bears. Such was the attraction of this gentle giant.
The UK Prime Minister who was watching all this fun and frolic from across the Atlantic Ocean, reached out to China. Clearly by now China was in a good mood. It wanted to open its trade borders with as many rich countries as it could. So off went another panda bear to a zoo in London. Soon after, China and the UK started selling lots of cars and technology to each other. Things went along happily, and China kept sending more of its panda bears to countries it was friendly with.
Gift no more…but lend we will
In the 1980s, China decided that it would stop gifting pandas, but it would LEND them to other countries. The country that borrowed the pandas would have to pay China a neat sum of $1million per panda per year. Also, these pandas would only be lent for a period of 10 years. At the end of the tenth year, China would decide if it still wanted to lend its pandas to that country, or not. Everyone loved the pandas so much that nobody really objected to paying the fee every year.
Dec 2023……..pandas go back home
A family of three pandas from a zoo in the US (26 yr old Tian Tian, 25-yr old Mei Xiang and 3-yr old Xiao Qi) hopped onto crates and flew back to Chengdu in China. Their 10-year contract was over and China was in no mood to let them stay in the US. Many leaders across the world became uncomfortable when they saw the pandas going back. Clearly, this could spell trouble as it might mean that China was no longer friendly with the US, and a war might be brewing between the two of them.
…and then came a ray of sunshine
Right when the world was getting jittery about China and the US, a statement came from one of China’s leaders. He came on stage in front of journalists who came to ask him if a war was around the corner. He announced,
“We are getting ready to send a giant panda to a zoo in California this year’
Applause broke out. People cheered. Everyone was relieved. Goodwill was restored.
