China's panda diplomacy was not pioneered by the Communist Party

 

 China's panda diplomacy was not pioneered by the Communist Party

Amid a dispute over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's remark on a possible Taiwan contingency, Japan's last two giant pandas will leave Tokyo's Ueno Zoo next month. This week's China Up Close looks at the history -- and present day implications -- of a diplomatic strategy that uses the rare animal as an ambassador of sorts.

It was the Nationalist Party -- not the communist regime -- that discovered the power of panda diplomacy. In 1941, it sent the animals to the U.S. in the hope of gaining the American public's favor amid China's war with Japan. It appears that the Chinese Communist Party followed its archenemy's success after it came to power in 1949, highlighted by the two pandas gifted to Japan in 1972 to commemorate the normalization of bilateral ties.

China is now taking its panda diplomacy to France. French President Emmanuel Macron recently visited China and held talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It was then that a new panda lease with France was announced. Japan's loss, it seems, is France's gain.