The Atlanta zoo will return its four pandas to China late this year, the facility announced Friday, in the latest chapter of a program often labeled “panda diplomacy.”
The parents and their twins have been the only giant pandas in the United States since November, when the National Zoo in Washington returned three of the bears to China in a move that some saw as an ominous sign of deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Chinese governments. China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos.