Foreign-born pandas join China's efforts to boost wild population

The fluffy envoys are loaned to overseas zoos as part of Beijing's "panda diplomacy", with the offspring returned to China within a few years of their birth to join breeding programmes. And as they sit among leafy surrounds in conservation centres in southwest China chomping on bamboo, they are oblivious to their diplomatic roles -- or the crucial part they could play in saving their species from extinction. "Our work is very intense and very urgent and we need to replenish the wild panda populations (with those) in captivity," Zhang Hemin...