China’s latest panda diplomats Ping Ping and Fu Shuang are en route to Atlanta
By Steven Jiang, Issy Ronald, Mike Valerio, CNN
Beijing (CNN) — Two giant pandas have left China on a flight bound for their new home at a zoo in Atlanta, the latest emissaries in Beijing’s long tradition of using “panda diplomacy” to strengthen ties with other countries.
They departed Chengdu, in southwestern China, at 2:55 a.m. Sunday morning local time (2:55 p.m. ET Saturday), China’s state news agency Xinhua said. The flight came just a day after Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington concluded.
During that visit, which was intended to address rising US-China tensions, Xi and US President Donald Trump extended a trade truce and agreed to establish an AI hotline between the two countries.
Video from Xinhua showed fans waving placards as trucks carrying the pandas headed to the airport, from the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in Sichuan province. Vehicles then towed two crates to the plane before they were lifted into it ahead of their journey, expected to last about 15 hours.
China also arranged for several veterinarians and breeders to remain at the zoo in Atlanta as the pandas enter quarantine upon arrival, the agency added.
The team at Zoo Atlanta and the Chinese team held “many online and offline meetings to carry out in-depth exchanges on the upgrading and transformation plan” for the venue that houses the pandas, which will be on loan from the Chinese government, according to Xinhua.
Rare, fluffy and irresistibly cute, pandas are adored across the globe. The animals once roamed a vast swath of China, along with parts of northern Myanmar and Vietnam, but human encroachment and climate change shrank the habitat of the bamboo-munching bears to just six mountain ranges above the Sichuan basin, deep in China’s hinterland.
Hailed in imperial times as the “land of heavenly abundance,” Sichuan is now better known as the “hometown of pandas.” The mountainous province boasts a latticework of panda nature reserves and breeding centers, all built in recent decades as China – and the world – raced to save the multimillion-years-old “living fossil” from extinction.
Provincial capital Chengdu – a sprawling metropolis known for its spicy hotpot and old tea houses – sits at the foot of snow-capped mountains with misty old-growth forests where wild pandas still roam.
The city’s panda breeding base is the largest in the country, housing more than 240 bears – or a third of the world’s captive panda population. The sprawling facility draws up to 11 million visitors a year, on par with Shanghai Disneyland.
Mending ties, courting new partners
Loaning pandas has long been a tool of Chinese diplomacy, following a decades-long government effort to transform them from a little-known animal into a cultural icon and national symbol. For more than half a century, Beijing has dispatched these charismatic animals overseas to shore up alliances, mend estranged ties and court new partners.
“The giant panda has been an envoy of friendship between the Chinese and Americans,” Xi said on Thursday, referencing the half-century in which pandas lived in US zoos on loan from the Chinese government. That tradition was started by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1972, shortly after Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit China following the Communist Party’s rise to power in 1949.
One of the pandas bound for Atlanta even has the same name – Ping Ping, meaning “peace” – as the first ever panda Mao gifted to the Soviet Union in 1957. He was born on March 17, 2020, has large black patches around his eyes and is especially good at climbing trees, according to China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
The other panda, Fu Shuang, meaning “double blessings,” was born seven months later on October 18. She has a small tuft of fur on the top of her head, a slightly protruding forehead and finds food very easily, the administration said.
Zookeepers at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding selected the pair after considering their age, health, genetics and personality.
“They should be docile and like each other, and hopefully be able to mate naturally,” the park’s deputy director Li Mingxi told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
They are scheduled to arrive in Atlanta early on Sunday morning local time. The zoo has hosted several pandas before. Another pair, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, had seven offspring there between 2006 and 2016 before returning to Chengdu.
Zoo Atlanta earlier in the year said it would be “delighted and honored” to welcome the two pandas.
A banner displayed at the zoo on Saturday read “The future home of Ping Ping and Fu Shuang.”
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.
Chinese officials and the Atlanta zoo “will carry out in-depth academic and cultural exchanges to continuously enhance mutual understanding and friendship between the people of China and the United States,” Xinhua said.
Panda diplomacy has offered some relief from the tensions increasingly shaping the US-China relationship in recent years, as the two countries compete in an AI arms race and engage in a spiraling trade war.
Two giant pandas arrived in San Diego in June 2024, the first time China allowed new pandas to travel to the US in more than two decades. A second pair traveled to Washington’s National Zoo later that year.
‘Hard to say goodbye’
In preparation for the move, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang have been quarantined for a month with a roster of live-in carers, Li said. The pandas have been trained for their long flight too, becoming used to their crate and loud noises.
In a report ahead of their upcoming journey to the US, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV asked their keeper to describe the pair.
Ping Ping “is brave and gentle,” Fu Jia said. “During training sessions, when he spots me holding an apple, he will make soft whimpering sounds, eager for the treat.”
Fu Shuang, on the other hand, “is crazy about honey,” she said.
Saying goodbye to the pair wouldn’t be easy, she added.
“After caring for them for so long… It’s like raising your own children.”
“They weighed barely over 100 grams at birth, and we nurtured them until they grew big and heavy. I won’t get to see them for quite a long time, so it’s hard to say goodbye.”
Late Saturday night, China’s ambassador to the US Xie Feng shared photos of the two pandas on his X account and said they were on their way.
“Get ready to greet our two fluffy stars!” he wrote.
CNN’s Xiaoqian Lin, Farida Elsebai, Rebekah Riess, Eduardo Cuevas and Mitchell McCluskey contributed reporting.
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