‘Bring Ya Ya home’: How a panda in the US turbocharged Chinese nationalist sentiment
CNN —
When Ya Ya, a giant panda from China, landed in the United States in 2003, several hundred spectators at the Memphis International Airport broke into cheers to welcome the fluffy goodwill ambassador from Beijing.
The moment encapsulated a high-point in US-China relations, coming two years after China joined the World Trade Organization with American support, and as the two countries deepened engagement in areas ranging from the economy to counter-terrorism.
Two decades later, as Ya Ya bid farewell to the US and boarded a plane heading back to China on Wednesday, she has become a symbol of deteriorating relations between the world’s two superpowers, which have fallen to their lowest point in half a century.
She landed in Shanghai Thursday after a 16-hour flight, carried home by a special FedEx “panda express” plane, Chinese state media reported.
For nearly three months, heated discussions in China about the treatment of Ya Ya by the Memphis Zoo have served to highlight just how antagonistic the US-China relationship has become.
Unlike the chubby, fluffy image of her younger self, 22-year-old Ya Ya has appeared skinny in recent photos, with her black and white coat missing clumps of fur.
Ya Ya greets her fans on April 8 as hundreds of people visited the zoo to say goodbye to the giant panda.
Karen Pulfer Focht/AP
Many in China have been shocked and saddened by her condition. Some believed she had not been given proper care and attention – an accusation first levied by animal advocates in 2021 but denied repeatedly by the Memphis Zoo.
Ya Ya and her male companion, Le Le, were due to return to China this year after the end of a 20-year loan. But Le Le died suddenly of heart disease in early February, further fueling suspicions of mistreatment.
As part of China’s “panda diplomacy,” these bears are meant to serve as an envoy of friendship between China and their host country. But for Chinese nationalists, Ya Ya has become a glaring symbol of what they see as America’s bullying and suppression of China.
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“Treating our national treasure with such an attitude is an outright provocation of China,” said a comment on Weibo, China’s heavily censored Twitter-like platform.
Meanwhile, videos of two playful, energetic pandas at the Moscow Zoo went viral on Chinese social media, drawing effusive praise for Russia for its care of the Chinese bears.
The apparent contrast between the pandas in the US and Russia was seized on by Chinese state media, which has taken on a pro-Russian stance since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and regularly fanned anti-US sentiment.
Ru Yi, a male giant panda at the Moscow Zoo, enjoys a special cake to mark the International Panda Day on March 16.
Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters
Determined to rescue Ya Ya from her perceived ordeal, Chinese internet users rallied to bring the panda home as soon as possible.
Some joined an online petition calling for her immediate return, others followed her every move on the zoo’s panda cams livestreams. Chinese people living in the US also took turns to visit her and shared updates on her condition – some flying in from as far as Los Angeles.
Throughout the past weeks, Ya Ya regularly appeared as a top trending topic on Weibo, each time attracting hundreds of millions of views. Photos of her were placed on advertising billboards from New York to Shanghai, along with the message:”Ya Ya, we’re waiting for you to come home.”
Like her arrival in the US, her return to China is laden with symbolism – this time not of growing friendship, but of mounting animosity and distrust.
Diplomatic tool
For eight decades, pandas have served as a something of a barometer of China’s international relations. Beijing has used the bears as a political tool since 1941, when it gifted a pair of cubs to Washington as gratitude for American assistance in fighting the Japanese invasion.After the Communist Party took power, panda exchanges were initially limited to China’s socialist allies – North Korea and the Soviet Union. But as Beijing began to reconnect with the world, the bears became goodwill ambassadors to the West as well.
During US President Richard Nixon’s historic ice-breaking trip to China in 1972, his wife visited the Beijing zoo and was reportedly charmed by its giant pandas. Weeks later, a pair of pandas arrived at the National Zoo in Washington DC.
Former first lady Patricia Nixon welcomes China's giant pandas at the National Zoo in Washington on April 20, 1972.
AP
“It was the first one that made a really big splash,” said E. Elena Songster, a historian at the Saint Mary’s College of California and author of the book Panda Nation.
“You have this transformation from these early gifts that were to express friendship or gratitude to this dramatic diplomatic gesture, that was reflecting a shift in the relation from enemy state to one of friendship,” she said.
In 1984, China stopped giving away its pandas for free and switched to a policy of high-priced loans. At first, the bears were rented out to foreign zoos for short-term exhibitions. It was later replaced by long-term “research” loans, which typically last 10 years and cost $1 million annually – money that Beijing said will go to conservation of the species.
China currently loans its pandas to about 20 countries around the world. Over the past decade, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has greatly expanded “panda diplomacy” in Europe, approving new loans to countries from Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark to Finland. Last year, China sent a pair of pandas to Qatar, in the first loan to a Middle Eastern country.
In contrast, China has not granted any panda loans to the US for two decades, since Ya Ya and Le Le arrived in Memphis, said Masaki Ienaga, an associate professor at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University.
Songster said China does seem to recognize the pandas are valuable for serving its needs. “As its needs change, the use of the pandas shifts, but it’s always serving the needs of the government at the time,” she said.