BERLIN – During his recent visit to Washington, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced that China would send a breeding pair of giant pandas to Zoo Atlanta.

The “envoys of friendship,” Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, arrived just a few days later. This is hardly the first time China has used its iconic bear as an instrument of soft power. By loaning the animals to overseas zoos, it seeks to project an image of China not as a threatening dragon, but rather as a tough but cuddly charmer.

But perhaps the true message of this “panda diplomacy” lies in the manipulation and exploitation it embodies. For starters, while China claims the familiar black-and-white bear as its mascot, one of the species’ primary natural habitats is Wolong, which sits on the steep edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Within a horizontal distance of about 30 miles, elevations range from alpine peaks exceeding 17,000 feet to below 1,600 feet, creating a moist, temperate microclimate that sustains the high-altitude bamboo forests where pandas thrive.

Historically part of the Tibetan region of Kham, Wolong is now under Sichuan provincial jurisdiction, in Aba Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous prefecture — and China is all too eager to subsume everything that makes it culturally unique.

Since China’s annexation of resource-rich Tibet in 1950-51, the government has systematically sought to erase Tibetan culture and identity,........

© The Japan Times