By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jacob Bogage
WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping has news for the people of Atlanta: The pandas are coming.
Two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, will arrive at Zoo Atlanta "in a few days," Xi announced at the start of his state visit to the United States on Thursday.
"The giant panda has been an envoy of friendship between the Chinese and Americans," he said at a White House ceremony. "Here, I have a piece of good news."
A Zoo Atlanta representative said the facility would not share information about Ping Ping and Fu Shuang's planned arrival date and declined to comment further. The zoo, which previously housed pandas from 1999 to 2024, announced an agreement in April with the China Wildlife Conservation Association to host the two bears.
China closely controls the exhibition of pandas, one of its prized national symbols. The country claims ownership of all the world's bears and leases them to international zoos in what's been dubbed "panda diplomacy."
The tradition began in 1957 when Mao Zedong gifted panda Ping Ping to the Soviet Union. Beijing gifted two pandas to the United States in 1972 as the countries began dialogue toward normalizing relations.
China stopped gifting pandas in 1984 because of the bears' dwindling population and leased them instead, often in pairs for a decade-long period. If the pandas produce offspring while abroad, the cubs remain the property of China and generally return to the country while still young.
Ebbs in diplomatic relations have also led Beijing to occasionally keep pandas out of the United States.
San Diego Zoo's long tenure as a panda host was interrupted from 2019 to 2024. The Washington, D.C., National Zoo, another traditional US home for pandas, had no bears for a period between 2023 and 2024 after the expiration of an agreement covering three bears there.
Two new pandas, Bao Li and Qing Bao, arrived in Washington in October 2024. Another pair, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, arrived at the San Diego Zoo in June 2024.
Pandas once were considered endangered, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature improved the species' status to "vulnerable" in 2016. Roughly 1,800 pandas live in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
(Reporting by Jacob Bogage; Editing by Sergio Non and Alistair Bell)
