Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Australia on June 16 focused on positive aspects of the bilateral relationship including shared giant pandas and a rebounding wine trade as he promised a new breeding pair of the rare bears and urged both countries to put aside their differences.

China’s most powerful leader after President Xi Jinping arrived late on June 15 in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia state, which has produced most of the Australian wine entering China since crippling tariffs were lifted in March that had effectively ended a 1.2 billion Australian dollar ($790 million) a year trade since 2020.

Mr. Li visited Adelaide Zoo, which has been home to China-born giant pandas Wang Wang and Fu Ni since 2009, before he was to have lunch at a restaurant at Adelaide winery Penfolds Magill Estate.

He announced that the zoo would be loaned another two pandas after the pair are due to return to China in November.

“China will soon provide another pair of pandas that are equally beautiful, lively, cute and younger to the Adelaide Zoo, and continue the cooperation on giant pandas between China and Australia,” Mr. Li said in Mandarin, adding that zoo staff would be invited to “pick a pair.”

Mr. Li was impressed by the 18-year-old male Wang Wang’s appetite and indifference to his high-ranking visitors.

“The panda is very obsessed with eating and doesn’t pay attention to us even when we are the people from its hometown visiting,” Mr. Li said at the panda enclosure.

“It has completely treated here as its second hometown,” Mr. Li said. “Very pretty, adorable, with charming naivety.”

The pair are the only pandas in the Southern Hemisphere and failed to produce offspring in Australia.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong thanked Mr. Li for ensuring that pandas would remain the zoo’s star attraction.

“It’s good for the economy, it’s good for South Australian jobs, it’s good for tourism, and it is a signal of goodwill, and we thank you,” Ms. Wong said.

Tom King, the managing director of Penfolds, one of Australia’s oldest wineries, told Chinese state media ahead of Mr. Li’s arrival that such visits helped strengthen economic and cultural ties.

“It’s pleasing to see the stabilizing of relations between the Australian and Chinese governments, including regular high-level visits between the two countries,” Mr. King was quoted as saying by the Global Times newspaper last week.

Mr. Li’s visit is the first to Australia by a Chinese premier in seven years and marks an improvement in relations since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor Party was elected in 2022.

Mr. Li noted that Mr. Albanese in November was the first Australian Prime Minister to visit China since 2016.

“China-Australia relations were back on track after a period of twists and turns, generating tangible benefits to the people of both countries,” Ms. Li said, according to a translation released by the Chinese Embassy in Australia on June 16.

“History has proven that mutual respect, seeking common ground while shelving differences and mutually beneficial cooperation are the valuable experience in growing China-Australia relations, and must be upheld and carried forward,” Mr. Li added.

Dozens of pro-China demonstrators and human rights protesters gathered outside the zoo before Mr. Li’s visit.

China initiated a reset of the relationship after the previous conservative administration’s nine years in power ended.

Relations collapsed over legislation that banned covert foreign interference in Australian politics, the exclusion of Chinese-owned telecommunications giant Huawei from rolling out the national 5G network due to security concerns, and Australia’s call for an independent investigation into the causes of and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Beijing imposed an array of official and unofficial trade blocks in 2020 on a range of Australian exports including coal, wine, beef, barley and wood that cost up to AU$20 billion ($13 billion) a year.

All the trade bans have now been lifted except for Australian live lobster exports. Trade Minister Don Farrell predicted that impediment would also be lifted soon after Mr. Li’s visit with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao.

Ms. Wong said Mr. Li’s visit was the result of “two years of very deliberate, very patient work by this government to bring about a stabilization of the relationship and to work towards the removal of trade impediments.”

“We will cooperate where we can, we will disagree where we must and we will engage in our national interest,” Ms. Wong told Australian Broadcasting Corp. before joining Li for lunch.

Mr. Li’s agenda will be more contentious when he leaves Adelaide to visit the national capital, Canberra, on June 17 and a Chinese-controlled lithium processing plant in resource-rich Western Australia state on June 18.

Mr. Albanese has said he will raise with Mr. Li during an annual leaders’ meeting recent clashes between the two countries’ militaries in the South China Sea and Yellow Sea that Australia argues endangered Australian personnel.

Mr. Albanese will also raise the fate of China-born Australian democracy blogger Yang Hengjun, who was given a suspended death sentence by a Beijing court in February. Australia is also concerned for Hong Kong-Australia dual national Gordon Ng, who was among 14 pro-democracy activists convicted by a Hong Kong court last month for national security offenses.

Mr. Li’s visit to Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia’s processing plant south of the Western Australia capital of Perth will underscore China’s interest in investing in critical minerals. The plant produces battery-grade lithium hydroxide for electric vehicles.

Australia shares the United States’ concerns over China’s dominance in the critical minerals, which are essential components in the world’s transition to renewable energy sources.

Citing Australia’s national interests, Treasurer Jim Chalmers recently ordered five Chinese-linked companies to divest their shares in the rare earth mining company, Northern Minerals.

Asked if Chinese companies could invest in processing critical minerals in Australia, Ms. Wong replied that Australia’s foreign investment framework was “open to all.”

“We want to grow our critical minerals industry,” Ms. Wong said.

Australia is the second stop of Mr. Li’s tour after New Zealand, and will end in Malaysia.

File photo: Pandas Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing move around in their enclosure at the National Zoo in Washington on one of the days they spent together, on May 6, 1975.
| Photo Credit: AP Photo

The story so far: China may be renewing its panda diplomacy project as the country is planning to loan the San Diego Zoo a pair of giant pandas, The Associated Press reported on Thursday. The China Wildlife Conservation Authority has signed cooperation agreements with San Diego and Madrid, Spain for the same, and is also in talks with zoos in Washington D.C. and Vienna, Austria, the report added, quoting China’s Xinhua News Agency.

If permits are approved, the pandas could arrive at the San Diego Zoo by the end of summer, the zoo officials told AP.

What is panda diplomacy?

Giant pandas are native to central China, particularly the Yangtze River basin. The Chinese government gifts or loans these endemic pandas to other countries as a symbol of friendship or soft diplomacy, hence leading to the phrase “panda diplomacy”.

How did panda diplomacy become popular?

Although panda diplomacy essentially picked up in the mid-to-late 20th century, some experts believe that a version of it existed as early as during the Tang Dynasty that ruled between 7th and 10th century. Records from the dynasty suggest that it presented two bears (believed to be pandas back then) to the Japanese court during Empress Wu Zetian’s rule, The Guardian reported.

There are multiple records of China gifting or donating pandas to countries like the U.S., the U.K., France, and Japan, but 1972 is often believed to be the start of modern panda diplomacy when, under Mao Zedong’s rule, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai gifted to giant pandas to America following U.S. President Richard Nixon’s state visit. According to the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington D.C., also the home of the two giant pandas, the pair Ling-Ling (a female) and Hsing-Hsing (a male) arrived on April 16, 1972.

China stopped gifting pandas in early 1980s, and instead started loaning them at a fee of around $1 million per year. Conditions to lend pandas may also include other requirements, like building facilities for their care and agreements to return offspring to China.

More than just soft diplomacy?

In 2013, the University of Oxford conducted a study which concluded that deals under panda diplomacy could “herald environmental implications over the long term.” They cited the example of Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland which received its first pair of pandas in December 2011. This deal was overseen by China’s deputy premier while negotiating contracts valued at £2.6 billion across a range of sectors like petrochemical and renewable energy technology, salmon meat, and Land Rovers.

The study also noted that panda deals with Canada, France, and Australia coincided with these countries’ uranium deals and contracts with China.

What next?

In November 2023, after Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden met for the first time in a year, Mr. Xi hinted that his country could start sending pandas to the U.S. again.

“We’re very excited and hopeful,” Megan Owen, member of San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and vice president of Wildlife Conservation Science, told AP. “They’ve expressed a tremendous amount of enthusiasm to re-initiate panda cooperation starting with the San Diego Zoo.”