A giant panda, or a pair of pandas, will be coming to the San Francisco Zoo sometime in the future, as Mayor London Breed has succeeded in her mission to coax some Panda Diplomacy out of China.

"We have some cute, cuddly, black and white beauties coming to our city," Breed announced in a video posted late Thursday to X.

"These Giant Pandas will honor our deep cultural connections and our Chinese and API heritage," Breed writes. "They will bring residents and visitors from all over who come to visit them at the SF Zoo."

Breed is still overseas in China, with Supervisor Joel Engardio acting as interim mayor in her absence. And in addition to drumming up more nonstop flight traffic from China to SFO, and luring a Chinese university university to establish a satellite campus here, getting Chinese officials to send us pandas was one of her main stated goals for the trip.

As Mission Local notes, this may or may not do anything for Breed's poll numbers with the local Chinese community, which have been dismal as of late. But she clearly hopes it will move the needle.

The next steps on the panda project include a visit next month from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and Chinese Wildlife Conservation Association, who will arrive in SF to meet with zoo officials.

SF Zoo CEO and Executive Director Tanya Peterson told ABC News in February that bringing the pandas here, in addition to a $1 million lease payment to the Chinese government, will cost the zoo around $25 million to construct a new enclosure and habitat for them.

In a video posted on Chinese media, Breed said, "My plan is to do everything I can to make it clear that … we stand ready and willing and able to host pandas at our zoo."

The timeline for the pandas' arrival remains unclear, as the Chronicle reports, since we don't know how long the improvements at the zoo will take.

The last time the SF Zoo hosted pandas on loan from China was in 1984 and 1985. The pandas, which are typically sent in pairs, made a couple of brief stops here and in Los Angeles in conjunction with LA hosting the Olympics in 1984.

The mayor's office said that during that panda visit, zoo attendance was four times what it normally was, and helped draw more than 260,000 visitors to the zoo.

The last time giant pandas were in California was in 2019, at the San Diego Zoo, before the Chinese government recalled them home.

Previously: SF Mayor Heads to China Next Week to Promote Tourism — and Lobby For a Panda

Top image: Male giant panda Xiao Qi Ji eats an ice cake for his third birthday at the Smithsonian National Zoo on August 21, 2023 in Washington, DC. This is the last year that the National Zoo is celebrating the birthdays for the three giant pandas, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and Xiao Qi Ji as they are scheduled to return to China later in 2023, with no replacements expected to be exchanged. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)