Moving farewell to Japan: four pandas on loan to the country will be sent back to China this week. And this Sunday, February 19, thousands of saddened visitors came to say goodbye. This is yet another example of Beijing’s “panda diplomacy”. China uses these friendly mammals to build political and economic ties with other countries.
They were several thousand, invited this Sunday morning by the zoo of Ueno, in Tokyo, to say goodbye to Xiang Xiang before his departure. This young five-year-old female panda has become the darling of Japanese visitors who waited in line for several hours to see her one last time. Some even asked the zoo to do everything to keep it a little longer.
But now, Xiang Xiang must return to China, the country of his parents, Tuesday, February 21. And like her, three other pandas currently living in another Japanese animal park are to return to their homeland this week.
The enthusiasm of Japanese visitors for these pandas is a success for Beijing: China uses the animal to develop its trade relations around the world. Since the Second World War, some twenty countries, including France, the United States and Taiwan, have been loaned one or more specimens.
The latest example of this ” panda diplomacy “, Qatar, to which Beijing loaned two animals before the Football World Cup last November. Everything but a coincidence, when you know that China is a big consumer of liquefied natural gas, and that the Gulf country is one of the main producers.
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