The creatures behind this curtain are none other than China's
newest ambassadors to the West.
And with them: China's president Xi Jinping
and long-term German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
On today's agenda: an audience with his furry excellence at Berlin Zoo
- right before the G20 summit of 2017.
But what makes these animals so important that the leaders of two of
the most powerful countries in the world couldn't skip a visit to the zoo
before engaging in tough talks about global trade and international security.
This act is much more important than you might think:
by entrusting Berlin with two "national treasures" and personally witnessing their unveiling,
President Xi was subtly signaling China's belief
that Germany might have the potential to replace the U.S.
as leader of the Western world.
However, the question remains: Is this strictly tied to politics,
or could the panda trade actually ensure the species' survival?
This is panda diplomacy.
Hey, friends, just a quick interruption.
Many of you still not subscribed.
So please click the red button below. It's free.
It helps us grow.
And you won't regret it.
Thank you. Now back to the video.
The black-and-white bear's entire range consists of only a small strip
of mountainous terrain on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau.
Yet everything about the giant panda is charged
with meaning and symbolism.
To many in the West,
the animal is the representative figure of wildlife conservation,
as well as perhaps reminding them of some comedic kung-fu cartoons.
In China, however, it's a majestic "national treasure"
that embodies the country's nature and ancient culture.
Vast amounts of money,
time and effort have been spent on saving the giant panda from extinction.
With China holding a monopoly over the species, and given the world's enthusiasm for it,
the giant panda equips its homeland with exceptionally high bargaining power.
So how does China's global panda policy actually work?
And how can it be beneficial for the country and the species itself?
China has experienced breathtaking exponential growth and thrived over
the past few decades to become the world's second largest economy today.
It is now seen as a superpower in military terms, and many other aspects.
But when it comes to "soft power" - meaning the ability to get other countries
to like it - China lags behind.
This is something it wants to change.
Chinese officials know that the giant panda is one of the government's
"most powerful weapons" in its effort to build soft power.
Across social media platforms, many of which are blocked in China,
the state media pumps out countless videos of cute panda stories
in an attempt to change the country's image.
And politicians buy into this propaganda game.
Apart from Angela Merkel, pandas have provided photo ops for leaders
ranging from Michelle Obama, Vladimir Putin, Justin Trudeau and Melania Trump
to the Austrian president and the King and Queen of Belgium.
Panda diplomacy has been around for a while now.
In fact, the first recorded example of it dates back to 685 A.D.,
when Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty presented a pair of live bears
to neighboring Japan.
In modern times,
after President Richard Nixon's famous visit to China in 1972,
a pair of pandas arrived at Washington, D.C.'s
National Zoo to mark rapprochement with the capitalist West.
They were famously welcomed to their new home by First Lady Pat Nixon.
"... and accept the precious gift of the panda."
Today, 20 countries around the globe have a total of 70 pandas on loan
from China, with several more loans already agreed or under negotiation.
Now, if we add China's biggest trading partner to the graph,
an interesting detail appears: many of the loans extended in recent years
have coincided with major trade deals between China
and the recipient country.
The panda has become a seal of approval.
If you want to establish long term trade with the Middle Kingdom, you need a bear.
In conservation terms, the policy has its apparent upsides.
Data reveals a stable and growing population of pandas in the wild.
The wild panda population has recovered throughout the last decades
to over 1800 bears, according to Chinese data.
More than 60 panda reserves are scattered across the region of Sichuan
and are meant to protect about a third of the animal's remaining range.
The plan is for them to be integrated into China's new approach
to a formal and centralized national park system.
This network consists of ten national parks,
of which the giant Panda National Park will form the flagship.
Late last year,
the species was officially downgraded from "endangered" to "vulnerable".
But ironically for the Chinese government, it's not automatically good news.
It reduces the importance of panda conservation and makes it harder
to raise money and draw attention to them.
Why, you might ask?
Well, foreign zoos and government send large sums of money
to China to borrow pandas for a few years.
The bears are loaned to zoos for an annual fee of up to $1 million each.
But that's not all.
If the pandas procreate, the zoo also has to bear the cost
of an extra cub tax of $400,000 to China.
All the while, the bears and their offspring remain the property of China.
In theory, all this money goes into panda conservation funds,
but we are totally reliant on Chinese data and the government's word that this
really is the case.
The zoos involved have
no say in where their money goes and hardly any idea how it's actually spent.
The captive panda population has doubled in less than a decade
to around 600 bears today.
This makes the number of captive pandas more than large enough
to justify genetic diversity for conservation efforts.
Apart from that,
attempts to reintroduce pandas to the wild have mostly failed so far.
The animals born in captivity simply don't have enough survival skills.
In the wild, pandas are scattered across all the reserves mentioned earlier.
Many of them are managed on a provincial or county level with poor transparency
or peer reviewed data and are plagued by a lack of resources, low pay
and other obstacles.
Downgrading the threat to the species could cause
the conservation work being done for it to be downgraded in importance too.
This is why the creation
of a formal, centralized national park system offers a great opportunity.
It establishes a one single institution with a unified management structure.
It also grants access to international researchers for easier
communication, as well as data exchange, more transparency,
and a better overall understanding of conservation efforts.
In short, the new national park system can take the protection of pandas
to the next level.
It can serve the species' survival in the wild, where it belongs.
Panda diplomacy is indeed a bizarre
and rather comical facet of international relations,
and the Chinese might not give up this strategy so fast.
But let's be honest, it's not what the panda needs
or should need for its survival.
Instead, what it requires is a local and international effort
to create circumstances that will ensure the well-being
of the entire species and the natural habitats that surround it.
Panda Bear is actually not the only one.
There are many cases where conservation efforts and politics are intertwined,
and that's always a good thing.
You'll find similar topics in the videos here.
And please don't forget to like and subscribe and turn notifications on.
There's much more coming up.