The zoo, which declined to touch upon the net misinformation, held the social gathering to bid farewell to the bears and their three-year-old cub Xiao Qi Ji, who can be returning to China in December as its contract with the Chinese language authorities expires.
One other panda named Ya Ya was returned to China by the Memphis Zoo in April after its mortgage settlement ended. This adopted uproar from Chinese language activists and social media customers who accused the zoo of abusing her.
Many additionally blamed the zoo for the dying of Ya Ya’s mate, Le Le, with accusations swirling on-line – regardless of no proof – that zookeepers had stabbed the bear and offered his eyeball.
The zoo vigorously rejected what it stated was “misinformation”. The Chinese language Affiliation of Zoological Gardens additionally backed the zookeepers, saying in a joint assertion that the bears on the Memphis zoo had obtained “glorious care”.
However that did little to quell the nationalist outrage.
“FAN THOSE FLAMES”
China’s state-linked International Occasions, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Social gathering, linked the controversy over Ya Ya to US-China geopolitical tensions.
“If this had not occurred throughout a interval when Washington is intensifying its containment and suppression of China, this matter wouldn’t have brought about such a stir,” it stated in an editorial in March.
Amid tense relations between the 2 largest economies over points equivalent to Taiwan, US observers say the Chinese language authorities seems eager to condone and encourage anti-American sentiment.
“Misinformation round panda remedy is an instance of a handy solution to fan these flames,” Isaac Stone Fish, chief government of China-focused knowledge firm Technique Dangers, informed AFP.
The misinformation not solely bred distrust about america in China but in addition sparked fervent calls to droop the panda change, doubtlessly closing what DFRLab known as one of many few avenues of cooperation between the 2 nations.
Except for Washington and Memphis, the zoos in San Diego and Atlanta have both returned or are set to return their pandas to China by subsequent yr. With out China’s extension of the mortgage settlement, US zoos face the prospect of getting no pandas for the primary time in 50 years.
“This (misinformation) marketing campaign is especially unhappy given the methods during which ‘panda diplomacy’ beforehand performed such an important function in serving to to foster constructive relations between China and the West,” Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson College, informed AFP.
It’s, he added, “an unlucky signal of the present state of relations between powers.”