Overseas panda stars represent China's image. "They can't be blemished by long mouths, sunken faces, dull fur, melancholia, odd habits or displaying stereotypical behavior," says Lan Jingchao, director of the Veterinary Hospital at Wolong in Sichuan Province. Photo: CFP

By Li Xiaoshu 

It was just like any other state visit. A plane with a painted logo sat on the tarmac. Inside, the flight crew were all wearing tailor-made costumes.

The red carpet was out. TV cameras and fuzzy microphone-wielding reporters were at hand. Nearby cars got stuck in traffic as thousands of fans flooded Tokyo streets decorated with special cartoon banners.

Minutes later, the great bear and his first lady arrived: Bili and Xiannu, loaned to Japan for an annual fee of 79 million yuan ($950,000), had ended their 30-hour journey from Sichuan Province to Tokyo.

Though sparking a public frenzy in the Japanese capital on February 21 and reportedly boosting the local economy by US$240 million, the Ailuropoda melanoleuca at the center of all the Nippon hoopla were criticized for costing too much by a Japanese Times editorial headlined "Softer Touch with Pandas" on February 25.

With wild pandas already almost extinct in their motherland, other nations can borrow a captive panda for 10 years at up to $1 million a year, a China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA) official confirmed.

"Pandas are dispatched overseas merely for international scientific research supported by foreign friends," said Zhong Yi, director of the association's International Affairs Office.

Partners donate their own preferred amount, explained China's "father of pandas" Zhang Hemin, director of the Wolong Nature Reserve Administration. 

"All proposed panda imports are targeted at conservation," he said, avoiding all mention of previous "commercial loaning" prohibited since 1996 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Thanks to foreign exchange earnings from international projects, he revealed, China has expanded its panda research and conservation bases from 13 to 64. 

A total of 30 pandas - nearly 10 percent of all of China's 317 captive pandas - were living overseas last year, according to the State Forestry Administration.

Visitors mourn the death of Xing Xing on September 29, 1999 at the National Zoo in Washington. Suffering cancer and kidney failure, the panda was euthanized the previous day. Photo: Joyce Naltchayan/AFP

Panda diplomacy

For most countries, importing pandas boosts zoo visitor numbers and indicates improving bilateral ties with the world's second-largest economy. Animal rights campaigners vehemently oppose trading million-dollar cubs of an animal on the verge of extinction in its native land.

Will Travers, CEO of the Born Free Foundation, a British conservation and animal rescue organization, opposed a Royal Zoological Society of Scotland plan to import two pandas to Edinburgh later this year on grounds of "animal exploitation."

"This is pure politics with these unfortunate animals the unwitting diplomatic pawns to serve often obscure objectives of so-called national interest," he said.

Travers called on the British prime minister and Edinburgh zoo to focus on real and meaningful conservation of pandas in their diminishing natural habitat and leave panda diplomacy to the history books.

"It would be far more sensible to see the money being invested in good wildlife reserves in China," said Ross Minett, an animal sentience and behavior researcher at OneKind, a leading UK animal charity.

The best chance for pandas' survival is a carefully managed captive breeding program while at the same time working with those in the wild on protection of their environment, argued Gary Wilson, Edinburgh zoo's chief operating officer.

"Payments included within the loan agreement will go to the CWCA not the Chinese government," he said. 

The Scottish cash was in fact supervised by the State Forestry Administration and its final use remained "flexible" or as "specified in the contract," said a CWCA project officer surnamed Zhang dealing with the zoo.

"Donors are obliged to oversee the whole budget spending based on an annual financial review and monthly reports provided by our association," she said, refusing to reveal any details of the contract.

As the alleged watchdogs over China's endangered animals, the State Forestry Administration manages policies and contracts that support global cooperation on panda research.

"Foreign donations will be reasonably allocated under most circumstances," said an official requested anonymity at the Department of Wildlife Conservation and Natural Reserve Management under the administration, "60 percent for wild panda preservation and 40 percent for giant panda breeding and research."

Fast facts: Pandas abroad

Soft power

For more than 1,000 years, China's rulers have deployed their cuddly diplomats to win friends abroad.

By 1984, the number of wild pandas had plummeted even as overseas demand for captive pandas exacerbated the problem.

The then-CWCA and China Zoological Association hunted and captured wild childbearing age pandas to lend to foreign zoos, according to The Last Panda by American conservationist George Beals Schaller, the first foreigner allowed to study the panda in its native habitat in 1980.

Schaller emerged shaken by the comprehensive mismanagement that had led to the panda's imminent extinction, dubbing the loans "aimed at infrastructure construction rather than panda preservation."

Under pressure from a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) lawsuit, zoos since 1998 can only import a panda if China channels more than half of the cash into conservation efforts for wild pandas and their habitat.

The fruits of this international pressure came in 1994 with the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding and the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda at Wolong that opened two years later.

"Pandas finally became employees of their own, not the state," joked Li Guo, a panda handler at the center.

Culture shock

When Bai Yun and Shi Shi arrived at San Diego Zoo on September 10, 1996, the Associated Press hailed the changes, noting this time the creatures wouldn't be "riding tricycles, twirling batons or balancing for zoo display."

Conservation and diversity offer them a neat defense, but zoo managers cannot deny nothing says "zoo" louder than a panda.

"Pandas inevitably turned into MasterCards for foreign zoos to grasp popularity, beat their enemies and earn huge amounts of money," said Wang Chengdong, assistant director at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.

"Without commercial concerns, why would they bother to repeatedly request pandas?"

Adelaide Zoo must repay AU$6.7 million over a decade, AdelaideNow reported on December 27 last year .

The zoo was by no means "floating on a sea of panda dollars," chief executive Chris West was quoted as saying.

"We are stretched - against a balanced business plan - and will be repaying the bank for a while."

Some, but not all, overseas zoos experience panda breeding problems. Four pandas died abroad last year, two from human wrongdoing.

Fourteen-year-old giant panda Long Long loaned to Kobe Zoo in Japan died of asphyxiation on September 9 last year. It appeared that while experts from Kobe Zoo were extracting semen from him, he choked on his own vomit, the Kyodo News reported. The city of Kobe is expected to pay about $500,000 compensation.

Hou Rong, research center director at the Chengdu Research Base, will never forget the scene when she visited Yang Yang at the Zoo Atlanta in the US in September 1999.

"She had lost 10 kilograms due to the climate and food in an alien place," Hou said.

Zoo Atlanta contributed 1 million dollars a year for 10 years.

"We know a lot of our money has gone to the Chengdu Research Base for Giant Panda Breeding," said Dennis Kelly, CEO of Zoo Atlanta.

"A new panda nursery where giant panda twins are routinely born and cared for, and a new animal hospital were built using our funds."

Born in San Diego Zoo on August 3, 2007, Zhen Zhen and sister Su Lin came to Bifengxia Panda Base, a breeding facility in Ya'an, Sichuan on September 24 last year.

Overwhelmed by strangeness, Zhen Zhen climbed a tree and stayed there for three days.

"We were so anxious that we almost chopped down the tree," said panda handler Qu Chunmao.

Used to American hardtack saltless biscuits, the two sisters vomited their fresh corn bread upon arrival in their traditional native land. 

The sisters eventually adapted to eating bamboo. Their mother Bai Yun remains in San Diego, seeing out her decade-long contract.

Pandas abroad: A timeline

685

De facto ruler of China through her husband and her sons from 665 to 690, Tang Dynasty (618-907) Empress Wu Zetian sends two giant pandas as gifts to the Emperor of Japan. Wu is the only female emperor in Chinese history and formally ruled from October 16, 690-February 22, 705. 

1935

American fashion designer and socialite Ruth Harkness brings giant panda Su Lin (male) to the Brookfield Zoo of Chicago in December..

1938

Su Lin dies on April 1.

American explorer Floyd Tangier Smith captures six giant pandas in Sichuan Province and ships them from Shanghai to the United Kingdom. Five arrive in London on December 24. One panda dies from internal lesions in transit, another in the quarantine station of London Zoo and Tang (male), Sung (male) and Ming (female) are sold to the London Zoo.

1941

Soong Mei-ling, wife of Kuomintang military and political leader Chiang Kai-shek gives the US a pair of giant pandas in thanks for US financial support during China's war efforts.

1957

Chinese Communist authorities give Ping Ping (male), one of three wild giant pandas captured by Beijing Zoo staff, to the Moscow Zoo on May 18. Ping Ping dies of inadequate care and the cold climate on May 29, 1961. China also sends An An (male) to Moscow on August 18, 1959.

1958

Austrian animal broker Heini Demmer acquires 4-year-old Chi Chi (female) from the Beijing Zoo in exchange for an impressive collection of African hoof stock in May 1958. He tours with Chi Chi through zoos in Europe and sells her to London Zoo for ï¿¡12,000 on September 30, 1958. Chi Chi goes on an officially planned mating trip to see An An in Moscow from August 30, 1968 until May 21, 1969, without success. He dies July 22, 1972 at London Zoo.

1965-1980

Five giant pandas sent to North Korea.

1972

Ling Ling (female) and Hsing Hsing (female) sent to the United States as friendship ambassadors after President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China. First Lady Pat Nixon donates the pandas to the National Zoo in Washington DC, where she welcomes them in an official ceremony. An estimated 1.1 million visitors come to see them the first year they are in the US.

1972

Kang Kang (male) and Lan Lan (female) sent to Tokyo's Ueno Zoo, marking the normalization of bilateral ties. The two cubs spark a panda craze in the country.

1973

Yan Yan (male) and Li Li (male) sent to France in December.

1974

Chia Chia (male) and Ching Ching (female) sent to the United Kingdom in April; Tian Tian (female) and Bao Bao (male) sent to West Germany in December.

1975

Ying Ying (female) and Bei Bei (male) sent to Mexico in September.  

1978

Shao Shao (female) and Qiang Qiang (male) sent to Spain in September.

1984

China lends two giant pandas to the Los Angeles Zoo in support of the Olympic Games.

1993

China Wildlife Conservation Association and China Zoological Association reach an agreement with international wildlife conservation organizations to loan giant pandas in pairs to overseas countries for 10 years for cooperative research with Chinese scientists. The pandas and their offspring remain the property of China and approximate annual fees of $1 million should be paid to China.

1994

Two pandas from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding travel to the Kobe Oji Zoo in Hyogo prefecture of Japan as science ambassadors for the first time. 

2007

The State Forestry Administration announces on September 12 that China will stop sending pandas to foreign countries as gifts.