China has said it will renew its “panda diplomacy” efforts with the United States and other nations after spending recent years bringing the bears it loans to foreign zoos back home.
China’s wildlife agency reached an agreement with the San Diego Zoo in California and the Madrid Zoo in Spain on “a new round of international cooperation on panda conservation”, according to a statement on the official WeChat account of the Chinese embassy in the US.
The first pair of pandas – a male and a female – could arrive in San Diego by late summer, officials at the zoo told the Associated Press.
China is also discussing renewing its cooperation with the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and Austria’s Schonbrunn Zoo, according to the embassy.
Restoring its decades-old panda diplomacy marks China’s latest effort to improve relations with the West, especially the US.
