If there’s anything Washingtonians love more than brunching and expanding the administrative state, it’s the giant pandas at the National Zoo. On Wednesday, Washington, D.C., dwellers watched with sadness as Tian Tian, Mei Xiang, and Xiao Qi Ji left the zoo via FedEx trucks and, with a police escort, traveled down I-66 to Dulles International Airport, from where they returned to China.

Taking the cuddly creatures back to their home country, from which they were on loan, seems to signal a breakdown in negotiations between Beijing and Washington. But it’s not just the Washington, D.C., pandas that are going home. The pandas in San Diego and Memphis zoos are long gone, and the Atlanta zoo’s four pandas are now the only ones left in the U.S. Even they are expected to be recalled in 2024.

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Pandas have been a tool of Chinese diplomacy ever since they arrived in the U.S. 50 years ago. When President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, first lady Patricia Nixon told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai she was fond of giant pandas. “As a gesture of goodwill,” the Smithsonian's National Zoo explains, Zhou “gifted two giant pandas to the American people.” The Nixons chose to house them at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

The problem for panda lovers is that China has decided not to renew its contracts that allow pandas to stay in the U.S. on loan. “Recently, agreements with many zoos around the world were not renewed — not just in the U.S., but in Europe too,” Johns Hopkins’ Ho-fung Hung, a political economy professor, says. “We don't know why the negotiation leads to non-renewal and can only guess. I suspect it might be related to the general trend that China has started to feel it should keep the good things to itself rather than sharing, selling, or renting to the world.”

Foreign policy hawks may say good riddance: the panda loans came with a hefty price tag of up to $1 million per panda per year, according to some estimates. Russia, notably, still has its pandas.

The National Zoo has been celebrating its pandas for months, with a weeklong “Panda Palooza” event in September. This author was sure to take her toddler; he may not see another panda in person without visiting Mexico City, soon to be the last bastion of panda diplomacy in North America. The National Zoo doesn’t seem too optimistic either.

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In a FAQ board put up for visitors, the question on everyone’s mind, “Will the zoo get pandas again?” is never answered directly. “After 51 years of success,” the answer concludes, “the Zoo remains committed to giant panda conservation and hopes to have giant pandas at the Zoo in the future.”

Well, at least there’s always Russia.