Fifty years ago this month, Chairman Mao made President Richard M. Nixon a promise: He would send two giant pandas to the United States.
Mao made this proclamation in February 1972, when Nixon visited China to begin a historic rapprochement. The announcement stirred up what The New York Times described at the time as “polite warfare” among American zoos angling to host the pandas, and ushered in a half-century of so-called panda diplomacy between China and the United States.
But now, a member of Congress from Nixon’s party is questioning whether panda diplomacy needs to change, and is aiming to send a message to China while it hosts the Olympic Games.
Panda diplomacy, in its current form, works like this: China loans pandas to a zoo in the United States or another country, and the zoo pays an annual fee — usually $500,000 to $1 million each — to keep the pandas for at least a few years. The animals serve as good-will ambassadors for China while, experts said, softening the country’s authoritarian image and drawing attention away from its record of human rights abuses.
