43 panda cubs born this year

A panda expert feeds a newborn panda cub born this year in the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Sichuan province. [Huang Zhiling/www.ming7.cn]

The figures were released in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning province on Wednesday when experts from around the world met for the start of a three-day annual conference of the Chinese Committee of Breeding Techniques for Giant Pandas.

When the committee was set up in 1989, there were just 92 pandas living in captivity worldwide. Today many of the problems they face, including difficulty in conceiving and for cubs to survive, have been solved.

Of the surviving cubs this year, 24 were born at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda under the administration of the Wolong Nature Reserve in Wenchuan county, Sichuan; 13 in the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, Sichuan, one was born in Chongqing Zoo in Chongqing municipality, and three in zoos in Toronto, Canada, Washington, the United States, and Malaysia, said Zhang Zhihe, chief of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.