Panda Diplomacy: The Soft Power of Cuddly Leverage

The panda in your Zoo is not a gift. Although they look like harmless, black-and-white fur balls with sleepy eyes, giant pandas are not just lovable zoo attractions; they are among the most influential instruments in China’s diplomatic toolkit.

For decades, Beijing has used pandas to reward friendly governments, deepen trade ties, and signal political approval. Just as importantly, it has used them to punish countries that fall out of favour. This strategy has a name: panda diplomacy.

The bear in your local zoo is a result of much negotiation. They are loans, they are expensive, and most of all, conditional. Those loans can be extended or terminated. In that sense, the panda is not merely an animal in the zoo. It is leverage with fur.

Political scientist Joseph Nye, who coined the concept of “soft power,” describes public diplomacy as the effort to win hearts and minds abroad. A country's soft power rests on its cultural resources, values, and policies.  Public diplomacy has a long history as a means of promoting a country's soft power.

Researcher Falk Hartig adds that public diplomacy seeks to reduce negative stereotypes, generate sympathy for a country’s identity and policies, and cultivate positive international relationships.

By those standards, pandas may be the perfect diplomatic asset. They are rare, globally recognisable, uniquely associated with China, and deeply beloved. NPR's Will Huntsberry once called the panda “perhaps the greatest diplomatic currency of them all.”

In 2023 Econ life estimated that the cost of housing or ‘’renting’’ a Giant Panda are as follows:

• Annual loan fees: roughly $1 million per year paid to China for panda rental

• Cub fees: around $400,000 for any cub born, with cubs later returned to China

• Habitat investments: about $8 million for specialised panda enclosures

• Bamboo supply costs: large daily amounts needed, around 12 kilograms (26 pounds), with extra due to picky eating habits

• Ongoing care expenses: high veterinary care and maintenance costs throughout their stay

This is backed up by Hartig’s (2013) research, showing that the overall trajectory is that Pandas are and probably will remain the zoo’s most expensive resident. Yet money alone does not secure pandas. China does not loan them to every wealthy country willing to pay. Evidence suggests panda placements often coincide with strategic economic relationships.

In practice, there appear to be two kinds of “panda transactions”: one tied to close regional partners, and another tied to broader strategic alignment through commerce.

The first pattern is straightforward: pandas tend to appear where economic ties with China are being strengthened.

For example, after the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area was launched in 2010, China leased giant pandas to Singapore in 2012 and Malaysia in 2014. They renewed the lease for their pandas with Thailand, which was due to expire in 2010.

However, the relationships can always change, for example, in 2014, Malaysia had its Panda delivery postponed because of disagreements over the Malaysian authorities' handling of the disappearance of flight MH370. An example of how the bears can be used as leverage.

The second pattern is more pointed: pandas tend to follow access to resources that China values.

In 2023, China recalled four pandas from Washington D.C.’s National Zoo and Tennessee’s Zoo, whose lease agreements had expired. Officially, it was a routine administrative decision. But the timing raised eyebrows. Relations between Washington and Beijing were already tense, with disputes over trade, technology and Taiwan changing the relationship. If no new pandas had arrived, the United States would have been left without giant pandas for the first time since 1972. For many observers, that felt symbolic. As political ties worsened, one of the most recognisable symbols of friendship quietly disappeared.

The same year, Britain saw a similar scene. The two pandas living at Edinburgh Zoo were returned to China after more than a decade in Scotland. Again, the official explanation was simply that the loan had ended. Yet their departure came during a period of increasingly strained relations between London and Beijing, marked by disagreements over Hong Kong, security concerns, and Chinese investment in the UK.

Japan may be the clearest recent example. Crowds packed Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo to say farewell to Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei, twin pandas born there in 2021. They were flown back for quarantine before moving to a conservation centre in Sichuan. For many Japanese visitors, it was emotional. It was political, too. Japan is now set to be without a giant panda for the first time since 1972, the year Tokyo and Beijing restored ties. As tensions rise, especially around the issue of Taiwan, the fading panda presence is hard to ignore.

Instead, the message remains clear: when relations cool, the pandas often go home.

Panda diplomacy works because it disguises influence as affection and rejection as administration. Military threats create resistance. Economic coercion breeds resentment. But pandas inspire joy, tourism, headlines, and emotional attachment. They make influence feel friendly. That is why they are so effective. That is soft power.

When a panda arrives, it is a statement of favour. When one leaves, it can be a warning.

The giant panda may be endangered in the wild, but as a tool of statecraft, it remains remarkably resilient.

Image: Flickr/Smithsonian's National Zoo

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