US-Chinese relations have grown more and more tense for the reason that president and the Chinese chief agreed to meet final October.
China’s function as Iran’s largest trading partner and its ongoing help for the nation in opposition to the US has elevated friction, most lately leading to a sanction by the US in opposition to a China-based oil refinery.
Atlanta zoo has homed a number of pandas over a 25-year-long partnership that first began in 1999. The two remaining pandas within the zoo’s custody had been returned to China in 2024. Additional pandas had been despatched to Washington’s National Zoo and the San Diego zoo that very same yr.
“Zoo Atlanta is delighted and honoured to yet again be trusted as stewards of this treasured species and to partner with the China Wildlife Conservation Association” Raymond King, the zoo’s president, wrote, including that he was trying ahead to welcoming the “community back to the wonder and joy of giant pandas”.
Symbol of peace
The observe grew to become often known as “Panda Diplomacy” after the Asian nation gave two to the United States underneath the Nixon administration in 1972, though they’d beforehand despatched two of the creatures over in 1941, earlier than the Second World War.
Pandas are native solely to China. These creatures, typically seen as a logo of peace, friendship and tradition, have additionally been offered to different nations as a gesture of goodwill.
Earlier this yr, worsening ties between Japan and China resulted within the return of Tokyo’s remaining two pandas, Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei.
The UK’s solely pair of pandas, Yang Guang and Tian Tian, had been additionally despatched again to their homeland in 2023 on the finish of their mortgage settlement, coinciding with more and more poor ties between China and the UK.
