How China Uses Its Pandas as Diplomacy Tools

There are over 1800 pandas alive today, and all of them belong to the People’s Republic of China. That includes every panda you’ve seen at a zoo in the United States, even the ones that were born there. As Vox explains in the video below, China has been giving pandas to its allies since the 1950s. Sometime between then and now, the country figured out they could use their monopoly on giant pandas as a diplomacy tool. Today, foreign countries pay about $1 million a year for panda loans and an extra $400,000 tax for any cub born in captivity. For the full story, check out the video below.

[h/t Vox]