SAN DIEGO (AP) — China plans to send a new pair of giant pandas to the San Diego Zoo, renewing its longstanding gesture of friendship toward the United States after recalling nearly all of the iconic bears loaned to U.S. zoos has as relations deteriorated between the two nations.

The China Wildlife Conservation Association has signed cooperation agreements with zoos in San Diego and Madrid, the Spanish capital, and is in talks with zoos in Washington, DC and Vienna, the Chinese organization said, describing the agreements as a new round of panda cooperation -Conservation area.

San Diego Zoo officials told The Associated Press that if all permits and other requirements are approved, two bears, a male and a female, are expected to arrive as soon as the end of the summer, about five years after the zoo welcomed its last pandas sent back to China.

“We are very excited and hopeful,” said Megan Owen of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and vice president of Wildlife Conservation Science. “They have expressed tremendous enthusiasm to restart panda collaboration, starting with the San Diego Zoo.”

Zoos typically pay a fee of $1 million a year for two pandas, with the money earmarked for China’s conservation efforts, according to a 2022 report by America’s Congressional Research Service.

In November, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed hope that his country would send pandas to the United States again after he and President Joe Biden met in Northern California for their first face-to-face meeting in a year and vowed to ease tensions.

China is considering a pair that includes a female offspring of Bai Yun and Gao Gao, two of the zoo’s former residents, said Owen, an expert on panda behavior who has worked in San Diego and China.

Bai Yun, who was born in captivity in China, lived at the zoo for more than 20 years and gave birth to six cubs there. She and her son were the zoo’s last pandas and returned to China in 2019.

Gao Gao was born in the wild in China and lived at the San Diego Zoo from 2003 to 2018 before being sent back.

Decades of conservation efforts in the wild and captive studies saved the giant panda species from extinction and increased its population from fewer than 1,000 to over 1,800 each in the wild and in captivity.

The black and white bears have long been a symbol of friendship between the United States and China, ever since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National Zoo in Washington, DC in 1972, ahead of the normalization of bilateral relations. China later loaned pandas to zoos to help raise cubs and expand the population.

The United States, Spain and Austria were among the first countries to cooperate with China on panda conservation, and 28 pandas were born in these countries, China’s official Xinhua news agency said. The latest collaboration will include research on disease prevention and habitat protection and contribute to the construction of China’s national panda park, it said.

“We look forward to further expanding research results on protecting endangered species such as the giant panda and promoting mutual understanding and friendship between peoples through the new round of international cooperation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said in Beijing.

Calls for the return of the giant pandas, known as China’s “national treasure,” grew among the Chinese public as unproven claims that U.S. zoos mistreated the pandas flooded Chinese social media.

Fears about the future of so-called panda diplomacy escalated last year when zoos in Memphis, Tennessee, and Washington, DC, returned their pandas to China, leaving just four pandas in the United States, all at the zoo in Atlanta. This loan agreement expires later this year.

Many loan agreements had a term of 10 years and were often extended well beyond that. But negotiations last year to extend agreements with US zoos or send more pandas failed to produce any results. China watchers speculated that Beijing was gradually withdrawing its pandas from Western countries due to deteriorating diplomatic relations with the United States and other countries.

Then on November 15, 2023, a week after the National Zoo’s pandas left for China, Xi spoke to American business leaders at a dinner in downtown San Francisco and hinted that more pandas might be sent. He said he learned that the San Diego Zoo and the people of California are “very much looking forward to welcoming the pandas back.”

“I was told that many Americans, especially children, really didn’t want to say goodbye to the pandas and went to the zoo to see them off,” Xi said.

The San Diego Zoo continued to work with its Chinese counterparts even after the pandas were no longer there.

Owen said China was particularly interested in sharing information about the zoo’s successful captive breeding of pandas. Giant pandas are difficult to breed in part because the female’s reproductive window is extremely narrow, lasting only 48 to 72 hours each year.

Bai Yun’s first cub, Hua Mei, was also the first panda born through artificial insemination to survive to adulthood outside of China. After she was sent to China, she gave birth to twelve cubs alone.

Meanwhile, Bai Yun remained at the zoo, where she gave birth to two more females and three males. Using cameras in their den, researchers observed them and helped understand maternal caregiving behavior, Owen said.

“We have a lot of institutional knowledge and capacity from our last collaborative agreement that we can bring to this next chapter and train the next generation of panda conservationists,” she said.

Chinese experts would travel with the bears and spend months in San Diego, Owen said.

She said the bears’ return is not only good for San Diego, but also for the recovery of the giant panda as a species.

“We talk about panda diplomacy all the time,” Owen said. “Diplomacy is a crucial part of conservation in many contexts. …. If we do not learn to work together in sometimes difficult situations or situations that are completely beyond the control of conservationists, then we will not succeed.”

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Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed.