San Francisco Mayor London Breed (left) and Wu Minglu, secretary general of the China Wildlife Conservation Association, hold up a giant panda lease agreement for the San Francisco Zoological Society and Gardens during a signing ceremony Friday in Beijing.
Liu Zheng/AP
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Liu Zheng/AP
San Francisco Mayor London Breed (left) and Wu Minglu, secretary general of the China Wildlife Conservation Association, hold up a giant panda lease agreement for the San Francisco Zoological Society and Gardens during a signing ceremony Friday in Beijing.
Liu Zheng/AP
BEIJING — San Francisco is the latest U.S. city to prepare to receive a pair of pandas from China, a continuation of Beijing’s famous “panda diplomacy.”
San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the panda loan in Beijing on Friday, alongside officials from the China Wildlife Conservation Association, or CWCA. This will be the first time San Francisco has been a long-term home to these beloved animals – the result of a year-long awareness campaign, Breed said.
San Diego previously announced it was receiving two pandas in February.
China is home to the only natural habitat of pandas and has most of the world’s black and white bears. Beijing lends the animals to other countries as a tool for diplomacy and wildlife conservation.
“San Francisco is absolutely thrilled to welcome giant pandas to the San Francisco Zoo,” Breed said after signing a letter of intent for international cooperation on giant panda conservation.
Breed said the city had been working with its Chinese and Asian communities to advocate for the pandas for nearly a year, leading up to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting in San Francisco last November, during which American and Chinese presidents met.
CWCA Secretary General Wu Minglu said the association would work with San Francisco authorities to prepare for the arrival of the pandas and ensure technical standards for their conservation.
“We look forward to seeing a pair of giant pandas in San Francisco in 2025,” he said.
When San Diego announced in February that it would receive a pair of pandas, it was the first time in more than two decades that China had agreed to send pandas to the United States.
Only four giant pandas are currently in the United States, all at Zoo Atlanta. In recent years, China has not renewed loan agreements with zoos in Washington, D.C. and Memphis, Tennessee, raising fears that it could end its historic panda diplomacy with Western countries due to tensions geopolitics.
Black and white bears have been a symbol of friendship between the United States and China since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, in 1972, before bilateral relations normalized. China later loaned pandas to zoos to help raise cubs and increase the population.
Friday’s announcement comes ahead of a planned visit to China next week by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Washington and Beijing have intensified their diplomatic exchanges in recent months, in an effort to ease escalating tensions. But friction remains over trade, national security and the countries’ divergent positions on conflicts such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas.
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