The final pandas living in U.S. zoos will soon return to Communist China in a move that observers of Sino-American relations are calling “punishment for Americans.” 

 When agreements expire in December, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo at Washington, D.C. will lose its three pandas, leaving only four at Atlanta, Georgia. Those pandas will also head back to China after their loan agreement expires next year, according to a statement from Zoo Atlanta.   

“With the USA being seen as unfriendly to China, Beijing is using the non-renewal as a punishment for Americans,” the director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, Steve Tsang, tells the Sun. “Economic and/or cultural ties are just additional instruments Beijing uses to get its way.”

The pandas’ looming departure will likely come as a major blow to the zoos at D.C. and Atlanta, where they are among the institutions’ biggest attractions. The zoos have both even incorporated the bears into their logos over the years.

“Panda diplomacy” — the decades-old practice of the Chinese government giving pandas to other countries as a symbol of friendship — traces back to President Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic in 1972 when the Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, gifted two baby pandas to the National Zoo in a signal of thawing Sino-American tensions.

In 1984, Communist China began loaning the furry sensations to U.S. zoos at a fixed rate. The money that the United States and other recipient nations pay China purportedly goes into a fund to conserve the endangered species. Contracts require the original pandas and all their offspring to return to the People’s Republic if the contracts are not renewed.

That’s what’s happening at American zoos today, which the professor of international relations at Notre Dame University and founder of the school’s international security center, Michael Desch, argues reflects the intensifying rivalry between the two great powers. Communist China’s recall of its bear diplomats is “a way of expressing displeasure with the more general trajectory of US-China relations,” he tells the Sun, indicating that “business as usual is not going to continue.” 

The People’s Republic’s “whole nation” approach to economic self-sufficiency, which its Vice-Premier, Liu He, outlined in May, is now extending to its cultural ties. This attempt at decoupling has little historical precedent, Mr. Desch says. The competition between America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, for example, had nowhere near the extent of cultural globalization seen today. 

Britain will also lose its last two pandas in December, as will Australia next year if an existing agreement is not extended. Meanwhile, Russia, which is increasingly strategically aligned with Communist China, gets to keep its pandas. President Putin signed a 15-year contract with President Xi in 2019, welcoming two giant pandas to the Moscow Zoo. “For the moment, having pandas in Russia reaffirms the strong strategic partnership between the two governments,” Mr. Tsang said. 

While the exotic exports appear to be a form of soft power, the issue is more than a political one — it’s emotional, too. Panda-lovers across the nation are expressing their sadness on social media, decrying the bears’ departure as “heartbreaking.” The Smithsonian even hosted a “Panda Palooza” celebration last week to issue a “giant farewell” for the giant pandas. 

“There’s always been a political dimension to loaning pandas,” a professor of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M’s school of government, Christopher Layne, tells the Sun. He said, though, that the issue should not be politicized. “We need to dial it down a little and be able to sort of compartmentalize. There are very important issues between the US and China, but panda bears should not be part of the geopolitical competition.”