Giant pandas Ping Ping and Fu Shuang left Chengdu early Sunday for a 10-year loan to Zoo Atlanta, under an agreement between China and the United States. At his Washington summit with Donald Trump, Xi Jinping said they would reach Atlanta within days.
The adult pandas were born in 2020 and were kept at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Atlanta's previous pandas left in 2024; the new agreement was announced in April without an arrival date.
The report described the loan as one of the few concrete outcomes of Xi's state visit, which brought expressions of goodwill but did not resolve longstanding differences between China and the United States. China has long used panda loans as diplomatic gestures and has let agreements lapse when tensions arise. Xi called the program an example of “friendship between the Chinese and Americans.”
