Giant Panda, the Cutest (and Chubbiest) Diplomat the World Has Ever Seen

And how one panda family won over the hearts and tears of South Korea

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In April 2024, like many perpetually online Asians who can’t resist a good panda moment, I watched Fu Bao’s departure from Korea back to China with bated breath.

Fu Bao is easily one of the biggest panda celebrities out there, but she’s hardly the only one. She’s part of China’s long-standing practice of “panda diplomacy.”

isn’t exclusive to pandas — or to China. Countries across Asia have used animals as political tokens for centuries. In 1990, Indonesia sent a pair of Komodo dragons to President George H.W. Bush. The phrase “white elephant” comes from a legend in which Siamese (now Thai) kings would gift the sacred but high-maintenance white elephants to those who displeased them, with the malicious intent that the upkeep cost would financially cripple the recipient. Very diplomatic indeed.

But why are pandas the most famous? Aside from their inherent cuteness and rarity, there must be some economic and cultural reasons why they are so coveted.

Panda diplomacy is by no means a foreign topic in the media. However, I found a strange phenomenon: most articles focus on the “diplomacy” part…