this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
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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.

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[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

As someone living in Japan... I honestly couldn't give a single dusty sprinkle of a shit as long as the animals aren't hurt during the move. People are so weirdly attached to pandas.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 2 points 23 hours ago

In Japan for over a decade now and agree.

[–] CalmMindRoad_1@lemmy.world 23 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago

China is heavily invested in Panda preservation. Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding is world renowned for conversation

[–] ManixT@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

That's so weird/trashy that china "controls" a whole breed of animal.

[–] kreskin@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

China was painting dogs to look like pandas and showing them in their zoo, so evidently they need those pandas back. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/20/travel/guangdong-china-panda-dog-zoo-intl-hnk

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 11 points 3 days ago

There's something ironic about real bears being repatriated to a country run by a toy one.

[–] neutronbumblebee@mander.xyz 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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.

[–] PrinceOfSloth@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

pandas are not a necessity. Sooner we get over it, the better.

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They're not even trying to exist. Why force them to?

[–] Impound4017@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Sorry I'm late, but is this even true, though? My understanding is that their population is only endangered due to human mass deforestation, and that the reproductive difficulties we see with Pandas are specific to captivity.

It’s not that they’re not trying to exist, it’s just that we took away their natural environments and they’re just not made for an artificial environment. There are plenty of animals that can’t live/reproduce in captivity, and it’s not because they’re not trying.

Idk, I’m not an expert on Pandas, but imo it feels incredibly arrogant for us to decimate their habitats, imprison them in artificial environments, blame them for being unable to adapt to the conditions that we inflicted on them, and then allow them to die as if that was somehow their desire or predetermined end.