A giant Panda as a Gift
This story explores the Pandas diplomacy in gift lens in anthropology. The giant panda, featured by its scarcity and affection from people, is a national treasure possessed by Chinese. Between 1957 and 1982, the Chinese government tried to build up or strengthen relations with other countries by giving the pandas, such as the US, the UK, Japan, Australia, etc. From the perspective of economy, pandas have extremely high economic values including ornamental value and academic contribution. For China, who was extremely poor during the period between 1957 and1982, this means losing a great treasure as well as wasting time to help the receiving country to build the base and teach them how to raise pandas. On the other hand, it will cost the receivers’ transportation fee on importing bamboos from China and other countries every day. Thus, taking the panda giving into consideration, it costs and does not gain either the giver or the receiver any benefits. So, why are both the giver and receiver being fond of this practice?
Contributed by LindongYang on 15/01/2018
One response to “A giant Panda as a Gift”
This is a good example of gift exchange as a form of diplomacy, but are you sure that neither parties benefit? Surely, the pandas spread the fame or reputation of China, while the receiving countries benefit economically from the large number of people who like to visit pandas.