Ten giant panda cubs will be brought to Shanghai for the international Expo 2010 fair, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

The pandas will be kept at the city's zoos.

Li Desheng, deputy director of the Wolong National Nature Reserve Administration Bureau, said that of the group, six are females and four are males. Two pairs are twins.

The pandas were born in the Ya'an Bifeng Gorge Breeding Base in the southwestern province of Sichuan after the deadly Wenchuan earthquake on May 12, 2008.

The Expo fair begins on May 21, and will run until October 31, 2010. It is expected to draw around 70 million visitors, mostly from China.

Giant pandas, known for being sexually inactive in captivity, are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

China started panda conservation in the 1950s. Through the combined efforts of locals, the WWF and the government, the number of giant pandas in China has increased by 1,000 since the 1970s. According to WWF research, there are about 1,600 pandas living in forests in China's Gansu, Sichuan and Shanxi provinces, and more than 200 living in captivity.

BEIJING, December 17 (RIA Novosti)