There were celebrations and tears on Friday at the Beauval Zoo southwest of Paris when its female panda Huan Huan gave birth to twins - with one surviving and one dying shortly after birth, reports Deutsche Welle.
It was the country's first-ever live panda birth - an extraordinarily rare occasion due to the difficulty in breeding pandas - and panda birthing specialists from China were on hand to help with the birth.
But their efforts could not save the first cub, born at 20:18 GMT and weighing just 121 grams (4.2) ounces. Shortly after birth, the cub started having difficulty breathing, and it died shortly after.
"It was too weak to survive," zoo director Rodolphe Delord said. "The Chinese experts, who have experience of this, saw it straight away."
"Our veterinary teams did everything they could to save it, but it was too small, too weak," he added.
Mother Huan Huan also intuited the weakness of her first cub, abandoning it once its twin was born at 20:32 GMT. She turned her attention to the new cub, which weighed 142.4 grams and was in "perfect health," the zoo said.