When China’s giant pandas Wang Wang and Fu Ni arrived in Australia in 2009, the relationship between Australia and China was blossoming.
China’s then-president Hu Jintao offered a breeding pair of pandas on a 10-year loan in 2007 while visiting Sydney for the APEC summit. He is pictured with John Howard, who was Australian prime minister at the time.China has spent eight decades building its panda diplomacy program into a worldwide behemoth that stretches from Helsinki to Adelaide. There are now 63 pandas on exchange in 19 different countries, according to data from China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have spent the past year stabilising the relationship with China by toning down their rhetoric while maintaining largely the same policy positions as the Coalition.“From a Chinese perspective, sharing the care of such a precious animal strengthens the bonds that China has with its ‘inner circle’ of countries,” said panda diplomacy expert Kathleen Buckingham in research published by Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment.
Allegations of poor treatment of pandas overseas have also fuelled anger among Chinese people, who are increasingly calling for more pandas to be bred at home as a symbol of national pride. In editorials, Chinese state media tied the treatment of Ya Ya to “Washington is intensifying its containment and suppression of China”.