The chances of getting a replacement are poor, with Tokyo’s relations with Beijing at their lowest point in years amid tensions over Taiwan.
Japanese panda fans gathered Sunday for the final public viewing at Tokyo’s Ueno zoo before twins Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei return to China this week.
Their departure on Tuesday will leave Japan with no pandas for the first time in half a century, and the chances of getting a replacement are poor, with Tokyo’s relations with Beijing at their lowest point in years.
China first sent pandas to Japan in 1972, a gift meant to mark the normalization of diplomatic ties between the two wary neighbors. The cuddly black-and-white bears immediately won Japanese hearts, and a dozen successors have become national celebrities.
pandas are not a necessity. Sooner we get over it, the better.
That’s actually kind of sad. It shows how even animals end up affected by political tensions they have nothing to do with. Hopefully this doesn’t hurt conservation efforts in the long run.
China is heavily invested in Panda preservation. Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding is world renowned for conversation
The furry paw of diplomacy. Now the nerd in me wants to see a graph of the Panda Index as a measure of Chinese opinion about other countries It’s the cuddly side of a relationship in contrast to darker clouds on the horizon.
There’s something ironic about real bears being repatriated to a country run by a toy one.
