Love panda, love my nation

Chapter 7 delves into the intertwined experiences of being Chinese and being a fan of the giant panda, exploring how these identities are shaped by the Western–Chinese interactions that have evolved since the emergence of the panda industry. The love for the giant panda and the love for China as a nation, encapsulated in the phrase “only China has pandas”, converge through the image of the giant panda. I argue that this convergence exemplifies the exercise and mechanism of biopower, which operates by generating and exploiting populations through national apparatuses. As Chapter 7 demonstrates, while the Chinese population exhibits an idealized, pure, and unconditional devotion to both the pandas and their nation, they have also become subjectivities shaped by the historical interactions between China and the West. The panda fandom, therefore, provides a social space where these complex interactions are negotiated and made sense of within the context of Chinese identity.