Soft Power and the "Panda Diplomacy"

The so-called Panda diplomacy is a long-running strategy by which today, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has sought to promote its interests in the world. In this regard, the grandson of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty gave two pandas to Japan as a gesture of goodwill. In the twentieth century, before the triumph of the revolution of Mao Tse-tung, it is known that the wife of Chiang Kai-shek initiated the practice of giving "friendly furry pandas white with black" (Nicholls, 2012). After the creation of the PRC in 1949, the charismatic mammal was used to strengthen and/or consolidate political ties between Beijing and other nations, a practice that continues until today. In the 1950s, the Chinese leadership began to give pandas to allied countries. Between 1972 and 1984, PRC gave these mammals to Western nations, among them, of course, the United States. From 1984 to 1998, pandas became part of the Chinese strategy of "open doors" to foreign investment and delivered only on loan, so that charismatic animals were "rented" to those priority countries to Beijing's foreign policy. To do this, the signing of a "lease" was instituted, and if in the period in which the panda (s) residing in the zoo somewhere in the world has (have) a little baby (often twins or even triplets are born, as happened a couple of years in a Chinese zoo), then baby (s) is (are) owned by the RPC. Times have changed: in the 1970s, for example, Beijing delivered pandas to access the world. Today is the opposite: the world wants to enter the Chinese market, one of the countries with the highest economic growth rate at a time of recession in various latitudes and before it, diplomacy panda is an excellent scenario in which the PRC first outside its partners what you want from them, offering then lending the iconic mammals. This is one of the edges of soft power. Through panda diplomacy, Beijing also manages to improve its international image regarding accusations of being one of the nations with the worst environmental standards in the world. The same can be said about the "other side" of PRC, a country that, even though protects the giant panda, is also one of the main destinations of illegal trade of threatened species worldwide.