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.
Page A2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 27 September 2026
Xi's gift to America: two giant pandas, plus an invitation to send 100,000 students to China
As it ran on the front
You will have seen the aircraft — a dedicated Boeing 777 out of Chengdu, the "FedEx Panda Express" — and you will have been told that what came off it in Atlanta on Sunday morning was a gift. Xi said as much on Thursday, at the White House, alongside Trump: the giant panda has been "an envoy of friendship between the Chinese and American people." Envoy. Envoy, mind you — an envoy is sent somewhere, and an envoy is recalled.
The wire does not report a gift. It reports "an agreement between the Chinese and American governments," and beneath that a second one, between Zoo Atlanta and the Chinese side. Two instruments for two animals. Two. A gift requires no consideration — nothing need come back the other way, that is precisely what makes it a gift — and an agreement between two states is consideration and nothing else. So what goes back? Thursday's announcement prints the one column: two pandas, and invitations for one hundred thousand American students to study in China. Invitations. Not visas ... invitations.…
…(cont) Ping Ping and Fu Shuang are in Atlanta. Those are the only terms published.
All winter a man feeds the borrowed horse. The horse goes home fat.
“A present you need two governments to sign for is not a present, it's a trade, and they put the cute half on the evening news. China's side got printed — two pandas, a hundred thousand American kids invited to study over there. Our side didn't get printed at all, and when nobody will tell you what we gave up, that's because you're what got spent.”
“Pandas are a win, everybody loves pandas, and frankly this is what strength at the negotiating table looks like. Did I say negotiating? It's friendship — envoy of friendship, those are their words, not mine. And a hundred thousand American students in China, that's our influence over there, that's us exporting values, why are you looking at me like that?”
The receipts
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.
BANGKOK (AP) — Two giant pandas arrived in Atlanta on Sunday morning as part of an agreement between the Chinese and American governments. Ping Ping and Fu Shuang departed Chengdu in southwestern China early Sunday aboard a dedicated “FedEx Panda Express” Boeing 777 aircraft, officials said.
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.