UPDATED on Oct. 15, 2024 at 3:31 ET
Nearly a year after Washington’s National Zoo sent its three giant pandas back to China amid a lapse in a half-century-old deal with Beijing, two new pandas arrived back in the country Tuesday.
Fulfilling a pledge made by Chinese President Xi Jinping at a dinner with business leaders in San Francisco following his summit with U.S. President Joe Biden last November, the 3-year-old pandas named Bao Li and Qing Bao touched down at Dulles International Airport near Washington.
The National Zoo sent back its last three giant pandas – Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and Xiao Qi Ji – just a week before the Nov. 16 talks between Xi and Biden, which led to a softening of then-tense bilateral ties.
The new pandas arrived via a FedEx Boeing 777 on Tuesday morning and now must be quarantined for 30 days, according to a statement from the National Zoo in May, when the plans were first announced.
On Tuesday, the National Zoo was closed amid the expected arrival of the two pandas. According to the zoo's website, the pandas will make their public debut on Jan. 24.
Bao Li and Qing Bao are on a 10-year lease from China that expires in April 2034, at a cost of $1 million per year, according to the zoo.
Panda diplomacy
The last round of the pandas at the National Zoo, which is a part of the Smithsonian Institution, had been in the United States for 23 years, and their departure amid last year's diplomatic tensions caused panda fans to fear that geopolitics might prevent the return of any replacements.
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But amid Xi’s efforts to convince U.S. business leaders not to withdraw investments in China as the country’s economy struggles to get back into gear, the Chinese president used a speech to American CEOs following his talks with Biden to pledge new “envoys of friendship.”
"Recently, the three pandas at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington have returned to China," Xi said on Nov. 16. "I was told that many American people, especially children, were really reluctant to say good-bye to the pandas and went to the zoo to see them off."
“Pandas have long been envoys of friendship between the Chinese American peoples,” he added, to applause. “We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation.”
The National Zoo's panda program began in 1972 during the normalization of ties between the United States and China amid the communist world's Sino-Soviet split, after then-U.S. President Richard Nixon's meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong in February that year.
Geopolitical pandemonium
Despite the political overtones of the past 52 years of panda diplomacy, zookeepers have sought to downplay the impact of geopolitics.
In an interview with the RFA Insider podcast on Sept. 25 ahead of the pandas' return, National Zoo Director Brandie Smith said that while the high profile of the pandas made for easy news stories linking them to political events, their return was the result of a lot of planning.
“A lot of people look at the news of that day and think it impacts the pandas, but the reality is the return of those giant pandas was three years in the making,” Smith told the podcast, adding that for American and Chinese zookeepers the priority was on “saving the species.”
A bureaucratic process to get permits, concerns about COVID and general logistics of transport had slowed things, Smith said.
“I almost take it as a compliment that people think there are larger machinations at work and that this program is part of it,” she said, “but the reality is that everything we have done has been planned.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster. Eugene Whong and Amy Lee contributed reporting.
Update adds public debut date.