Correspondent’s Comment | The panda that was returned too thin shocked the Chinese – Finland’s solution gets a gentler reception

Beijing

Welcome home!

On social media, the Chinese have welcomed the news of the return of Lum and Pyry, who lived in Ähtäri, to their birthplace later this year.

“This is so great, if you can’t afford to keep them, just return them back to us. We don’t blame you, instead we thank you!!! Thank you Finland for returning our national treasure to us! They are our loved ones! Thank you for taking good care of them!” wrote the moniker mintaoyizhizai on Weibo, or China’s Twitter.

The return of the pandas has collected twenty media publications and millions of views on Weibo. The tone is friendly.

The Beijing Evening News notes that the Finns spent more than eight million euros on the pandas’ luxury mansion and showed the animals’ naming ceremony on national television. Now, however, the money is gone.

The majority of Chinese are happy specifically that Finland acknowledges the financial problems related to caring for the pandas.

“It’s okay that they can’t afford pandas, as long as they don’t abuse them,” writes one commenter.

Always the return of the pandas has not gone as well. When Ya Ya the panda returned from the United States to Shanghai in the spring of last year, the Chinese were shocked.

Panda was too skinny!

Weibo users did not spare their dismay.

“In the end, Ya Ya is able to go back home. I’m so sad to see her so skinny,” stated one.

“It’s hard to imagine what a horrible life he lived before. I really can’t believe that such a wonderful animal as a panda has to suffer from hunger,” horrified another.

There was time to worry about Ya Ya’s condition before her return. Its comrade Le Le had died in February in the United States. Some blamed foreign nurses for the death.

Animal welfare organizations operating in the United States and on the Internet also demand Ya Ya’s return to China.

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Pandas are never just about money.

Pandas are politics, and China has used them as ambassadors since WWII. In recent years, China’s relations with the West have tightened. At the same time, a large number of pandas have returned to China.

US Zoos started losing pandas in the spring of 2019. Last fall, the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., returned the pandas it had cared for for more than half a century.

Pandas have been returned and are being returned by other zoos in the United States, Britain, Australia and Japan. The Japanese have mourned those born in Tokyo in 2017 Xiang Xiang – last year’s migration of the panda to Sichuan.

Ähtärin In its announcement, the zoo justifies the abandonment of the pandas by, among other things, a decrease in tourism, inflation and rising interest rates.

However, pandas are never just about money.

In 2017, cooperation documents on panda protection work were signed at the Presidential Palace. The then President of the Republic of Finland was also present Sauli Niinistö than the leader of China Xi Jinping too.

At the press conference, Niinistö stated that the relations between Finland and China are excellent and deep. It was certainly promoted by Niinistö’s assurance that Finland would adhere to the so-called one-China policy.

For a moment it seemed that the days of panda diplomacy were over. In its foreign policy, China focused on snarling wolf warriors and repatriated pandas.

However, a slowdown is visible.

This year, China has promised new pandas to both the United States and Australia.

On social media, the Chinese have been happy to see that Ya Ya-panda, who returned to his homeland, has recovered. A couple of pictures have been circulating on the Internet: Ya Ya, who lives in the United States, and Ya Ya, who returned to China with a shiny chubby face, are next to each other.

Hardly anyone imagines that the pair of pictures is only about animal protection. Panda can’t do anything for his political hair.