Two pandas sent from Chengdu to Atlanta after Xi–Trump summit
Ping Ping and Fu Shuang will be loaned to the Atlanta Zoo for ten years after Xi Jinping announced the plan during his three-day state visit to Washington.
Two giant pandas were dispatched from Chengdu in southwest China early this morning to their new home in Atlanta, the latest tangible outcome of the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington.
During his three-day state visit to Washington, Xi announced that the pandas would be sent to Atlanta in the coming days; the animals left Chengdu shortly after the summit concluded.
Loan terms and names
The pandas, named Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, are two adult animals that will be loaned to the Atlanta Zoo under a ten-year agreement. Atlanta has been without pandas since 2024, and the arrival marks the return of the species to the zoo after a two-year absence.
Zoo officials and diplomats described the loan as one of the rare concrete deliverables from the high-level talks, which otherwise centered on goodwill and cooperation while leaving several long-standing disputes unresolved.
China has long used panda loans as an instrument of international diplomacy, sending animals abroad through formal loan programs as gestures of goodwill and sometimes withdrawing them if bilateral tensions increase. Xi Jinping described the panda program as an example of "Chinese-American friendship."
Photo: press material from the event
