SAN FRANCISCO — After joining Chinese leader Xi Jinping for dinner last year, San Francisco Mayor London Breed accompanied him to the airport to say goodbye. There, on the track, she made her wish: pandas.
His city’s zoo was struggling. Tourism was suffering and she faced a difficult re-election campaign. A pair of pandas from China would be a political and public relations victory.
What followed were months of informal negotiations, with Breed — a politician with no experience in international affairs or security — becoming something of a diplomat. She went to China, where she met with the vice president and a deputy foreign minister, her calendars and emails show. She traveled with the editor of Sing Tao US, a pro-China newspaper that registers as a foreign agent in the United States, according to other records and photographs from the trip.
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All of this was organized by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, a group that U.S. intelligence officials concluded seeks to “malignantly influence” local leaders. Unlike traveling Washington politicians, Breed did not receive a CIA briefing on what counterintelligence threats she might face in China and how officials there might try to manipulate her.
If Breed wanted pandas, China was also interested in the meeting — as a way to cultivate a relationship with the mayor of one of America’s most technologically important cities. There is no evidence of any trading of favors or wrongdoing, but intelligence officials say China is increasingly seeking to exert influence in local governments as its influence in Washington wanes.
One of the mechanisms it has, documents and interviews show, are pandas. Chinese officials have sought to use pandas to cultivate relationships, shape policy on Taiwan and soften China’s image abroad, a key goal of Xi’s. Panda swaps provide Chinese leaders with rare, high-profile opportunities to rebrand their country.
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This has been this way for a long time. During panda talks with Omaha and Oakland in the mid-2000s, Chinese diplomats tried to sabotage a Nebraska trade deal with Taiwan and persuade a California member of Congress to stop criticizing Beijing, U.S. negotiators said. When those efforts failed, China denied pandas to both cities, they said.
But intelligence officials say China’s reach is increasing locally, where officers often lack the training or intelligence briefings needed to defend themselves.
In September, federal prosecutors charged a former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul with receiving payments to ensure Chinese influence in Albany. Also this year, a former aide to New York Mayor Eric Adams came under scrutiny after collaborating with groups linked to the Chinese government.
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Local officials in the US and Europe are also struggling to make sense of a network of unofficial Chinese police posts that have sprung up unexpectedly.
As relations between Beijing and Washington have cooled and high-level delegations have dwindled, diplomacy at the local level has taken on increasing importance.
“Every mayor wants the publicity of getting pandas,” said David Towne, a former panda negotiator for American zoos. “Pandas become the bait,” he added.
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Pandas are the face of wildlife conservation. Zoos pay about $1 million a year to rent them from China and breed them in captivity, in the hope that the pandas will one day be released into the wild. China should use the money to protect wild species.
But a New York Times investigation this year revealed that after three decades, China has actually captured more pandas than it has released. And aggressive artificial breeding has injured and even killed pandas. China directed millions of dollars to build infrastructure such as apartments and roads, while U.S. zoo administrators and regulators ignored the situation.
Zoos have an incentive to keep the program going. Pandas attract crowds and merchandise sales. China, too, has an interest in exchanges.
“Pandas are an interesting part of the propaganda and influence-seeking puzzle because they are seemingly innocuous, cute and huggable,” said Orville Schell, who directs the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.
As Lee Simmons, former director of the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha, put it: “Almost all Chinese ambassadors were panda salesmen.”
The Chinese Embassy in Washington has not commented on whether the Chinese government has used pandas to advance its political interests. He said pandas “promoted people-to-people exchanges between China and the US and strengthened friendship between the two peoples.” It criticized anyone who “maliciously associated and irrationally defamed China-US cooperation on giant panda conservation without factual evidence.”
Breed’s office declined to say whether the mayor had concerns about her trip organizers or the newspaper being registered as a foreign agent.
“This was a trip designed to increase tourism, which would ultimately benefit the San Francisco economy,” his office said in a statement.
Breed announced this spring that two pandas will arrive in San Francisco next year.
Influence of Pandas
The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries portrays itself as non-governmental. But it is an arm of the Communist Party, tasked with overseeing outreach to foreign local governments.
In 2022, the U.S. director of national intelligence warned state legislatures and city halls that China had “increased its efforts to cultivate U.S. state and local leaders in a strategy that some described as ‘using the local to surround the central.’” Intelligence officials cited the friendship group as part of that effort.
Across the Bay from San Francisco, in Oakland, politicians spent nearly a decade trying to get pandas for the city’s zoo. Henry Chang, a former vice mayor, said he met with a vice premier and several other senior Chinese officials, adding that they made what he saw as increasingly unreasonable demands.
In a 2008 meeting with the Chinese ambassador in Washington, Chang said he brought with him Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif. The meeting was ostensibly about pandas, but an aide pressured Lee to stop criticizing China’s activities in Africa, Chang said. Lee had sponsored a resolution the previous year calling on China to use its influence in Sudan to end the genocide there.
“They were more interested in talking to Barbara Lee about the problem in Africa than talking about pandas, to tell you the truth,” he noted.
Lee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Oakland Zoo built a $1 million panda enclosure and donated $375,000 to a panda breeding center in Chengdu, southwest China, Chang said. The pandas never came.
In San Diego, a Chinese diplomat wrote to Mayor Todd Gloria in late 2023, requesting a meeting on pandas and “mutually beneficial cooperation.” The mayor agreed to meet at the zoo, which an executive suggested was a low-key location, emails and calendar records show.
When San Diego finally welcomed pandas in June, Gloria flew to China for their departure. While there, he said in an interview, he met with a vice foreign minister in Beijing.
Gloria said she understood it was a “difficult time” for US-China relations, but that she was aware of the relationship.
“I could control what I’m a part of,” Gloria said. “Through engagement, you gain understanding. You are able to collaborate.”
But Beijing’s talking points infiltrated San Diego’s panda welcoming ceremony — and not just the Chinese ambassador’s speech. Paul Baribault, a zoo official, spoke about the institution’s commitment to a “shared future,” a signature Xi foreign policy concept that sees China and other countries competing with the United States for influence.
California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke about “common humanity,” another buzzword of Xi’s administration.
San Francisco is still waiting to find out when its pandas will arrive. Breed lost her re-election bid in November, but her successor, Daniel Lurie, has said he hopes to bring pandas back to the city.
c.2024 The New York Times Company
