Two giant pandas are set to arrive at Zoo Atlanta in the coming days, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced Thursday during a press conference at the White House. “The giant panda has been an envoy of friendship between the Chinese and American people,” Xi said in a translated statement.
Page A2From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 27 September 2026
Xi gifts Atlanta two pandas, retains ownership of the pandas and of any cub born in Georgia
As it ran on the front
You will have read that Xi came bearing gifts, and you will have let the word stand. Do not. Two pandas set off for Atlanta this week under an arrangement decades old, and under that arrangement the animals remain the property of the People's Republic for the whole of their stay in Georgia. So does any cub born on American soil. Born in Atlanta, owned in Beijing — and that is not a loophole, that is the clause, and a handsome one.
Usufruct: one party takes the use and the enjoyment of a thing, another party keeps the title, and the title does not move. Zoo Atlanta takes the turnstile. Beijing keeps the pedigree.…
…(cont) "The giant panda has been an envoy of friendship between the Chinese and the Americans," Xi said at the White House on Thursday. An envoy. Not a gift — an envoy ... and an envoy goes home.
The other gift announced that day: invitations for 100,000 American students to study in China. Invitations. They come home at the end of it. So does the cub.
All winter a man feeds the borrowed mare. The foal leaves in spring.
“A gift you hand back is not a gift, it is a rental, and the paperwork has said so for decades. Atlanta feeds them, Atlanta houses them, Atlanta sells the tickets, and the second one is born in Georgia it belongs to somebody five thousand miles away. Same with the hundred thousand students — invited, not given, and expected back.”
“Look, "gift" is a diplomatic term of art, everybody understands that, nobody thought the zoo was getting a deed. Did I say nobody thought that? That does not sound like me. The point is Atlanta gets the crowds and the goodwill, and frankly you people would complain if he had brought nothing.”
The receipts
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that the pandas would arrive in Atlanta in the coming days.
President Trump honored Chinese President Xi Jinping with a state dinner on Thursday. Xi announced a new gift of giant pandas, on their way to a zoo in Atlanta, part of what Xi called an "envoy of friendship" between the two nations.
China expert Gordon Chang claims Xi Jinping is preparing China for war against the U.S. as President Donald Trump hosts a high-stakes summit Thursday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the White House on Thursday he was gifting the U.S. with two giant pandas and invitations for 100,000 U.S. students to study in China.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.