Unmasking ‘panda diplomacy’

The star of the Beijing Winter Olympics wasn’t an athlete: it was Bing Dwen Dwen, the spacesuit-clad panda mascot. It was deployed to cover the harsher political edges of the games, and was romping around on the ice at the closing gala.

Bing Dwen Dwen is only the latest example of China’s use of ‘panda diplomacy’, so successful over recent decades. The Chinese Communist party has long used them as envoys to potential partners.

A bill now wending its way through the US Congress strikes at the heart of panda diplomacy. If it passes, it will keep American-born giant panda cubs in the US, which would break China’s monopoly on these vulnerable animals. ‘We do need to think outside of the box in terms of dealing with [the CCP’s] aggression,’ said Nancy Mace, the Republican congresswoman who introduced the bill.

Mace’s bill marks the 50th anniversary of the most notorious example of panda diplomacy — in 1972 a pair of giant pandas were famously loaned to the National Zoo in Washington as a symbol of rapprochement between Mao’s China and Richard Nixon’s America.