Bamboo-zled: Albanese embraces China’s panda diplomacy

The Prime Minister has enjoyed a relaxing end to his record trip to China by visiting the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is seen with retired Adelaide Zoo panda Fu Ni at a park in Chengdu, China. Picture: AAP

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Sixteen-year-old giant panda Da Mao chewed lazily on a succulent bamboo shoot as Anthony Albanese, Jodie Haydon and their motley retinue gawked at him through the glass at Chengdu’s sprawling panda park.

On the final day of his record-length visit to China, the Prime Minister cast aside concerns he could be labelled a “panda hugger”, opting to soak up China’s famous “panda diplomacy”.

“They’ve been like this for thousands of years!” he marvelled as he toured the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.

The facility is the largest of its kind in China, co-ordinating the country’s panda loans to its favoured partner nations, including Australia.

Last year, Adelaide Zoo received two new pandas, Xing Qiu and Yi Lan, in recognition of the stabilisation of the Australia-China relationship under Labor.

Albanese and Heydon stopped by to visit one of the pandas they replaced, Fu Ni, who was enjoying her retirement in one of the centre’s outside enclosures.

“Our Adelaide Zoo pandas are a great sign of friendship between China and Australia,” the PM gushed.

China has been using its pandas as a soft diplomacy tool since the 1950s. But the practice has a hard edge.

Da Mao and another panda, Er Shun, were returned from Canada in 2020, before their 10-year contract was up, due to a slowing of bamboo shipments from China.

Beijing blamed the Covid-19 pandemic, but the pandas’ return came amid a breakdown in relations between the countries over Ottawa’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, and China’s retaliatory detention of the “Two Michaels” – Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.

Lowy Institute North Asia fellow Richard McGregor said Beijing’s panda diplomacy had become “more hard-headed” in recent years.

“They are rarely gifted anymore,” he said.

“Instead they are leased or lent, which means their diplomatic weight has a longer shelf life.”

Adelaide Zoo’s pandas cost about $780,000 a year to keep, or about $15,000 a week, according to federal budget papers.

While pandas are famously uninterested in sex, at least in captivity, any born in overseas zoos are deemed to be Chinese and, under the terms set by Beijing, must be returned to their home country by the age of four.

The US received its first two pandas from China in 1972, after Richard Nixon’s first trip to China, symbolising the “opening up” of the country to the world.

“Symbolism is a central part of Chinese culture and diplomacy,” Georgetown University animal diplomacy expert Barbara Bodine said in a 2024 article on the subject.

“They are often referred to as a ‘seal’, agreed to once China turns a corner with a country, be it in diplomatic, trade or security matters.

“This was especially important during the early phases of China’s opening up when countries were interested in certainty amid this new phase of Chinese communism.

“Pandas really did make a difference, but primarily as a symbolic tool.”