Prior to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, China decided to give Qatar two enormous pandas, which animal rights organization PETA criticized as being “out of touch.”
The two pandas, known in Chinese as Si Hai and Jing Jing, arrived in Qatar on Wednesday. They will spend the next 15 years in an indoor habitat created to mimic the conditions of their native western Chinese forests.
When the World Cup kicks off on November 20 after a 21-day quarantine, the pair will be open to the public for viewing. Qatar anticipates welcoming more than 1.2 million spectators to the event.
“Giving real animals away like stuffed animals is not only rude and cruel, it is also not sport. This present is out of date and disregards the many other marvels that China is renowned for; for example, a model of the Great Wall or a calligraphy pen would have been considerably more appropriate “Elisa Allen, vice president of programs at PETA, spoke to Insider.
“Pandas shouldn’t be kept in a cage hundreds of kilometers from their natural habitat so that people may stare at them for amusement. The desire to see pandas flourish in their native surroundings, the deep forests of the mountainous Sichuan region, is shared by many good people in China and across the globe.”
Giant pandas have been sent from China to other countries for hundreds of years in an effort to strengthen diplomatic ties—a strategy known as “Panda diplomacy.”
But Qatar is the first Middle Eastern nation to receive the animals as a gift from China.
The Chinese ambassador to Qatar, Zhou Jian, referred to the pandas as a “symbol of peace” in his remarks at the pandas’ welcoming ceremony on Wednesday.
He predicted that the two adorable pandas will soon be the center of attention for both Middle Eastern celebrities and the people of Qatar. “We believe that the arrival of the pandas will help to spread the notion of peaceful coexistence between man and environment.”
Zhou said, “still plagued by upheaval and violence” regions of the Middle East may benefit from the pandas’ ability to bring peace.
In order to cease conflicts and transform swords into plowshares, he stated, “we believe that these two wonderful pandas may awaken people’s desire for peace and trust in progress.”
One of the most endangered animals in the world is the giant panda, which very sometimes reproduces in the wild and depends on a diet of bamboo.
There may only be 1,864 giant pandas left in the wild, while another 600 are housed in zoos and reserves throughout the globe, according to Smithsonian’s National Zoo.