Visitors descended on the National Zoo in Washington on Friday to witness the joyous unveiling of two pandas on loan from China. Fans posted photos and videos on social media, as did the zoo Under the hashtag #dcpandas.

But in China, the government has sent a chilling message to Panda fans to watch what they say online. Some online influencers have been arrested or questioned over what authorities have called “rumors” and a “radical fan culture.”

Police targeted people who advocated for animal welfare or criticized foreign exchanges such as the one that brought pandas to Washington. But state media also issued warnings about the wider Panda fandom. The moves come amid Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s crackdown on online fan culture.

China has millions of panda fans, many of whom have taken up the cause of animal welfare in the country aggressive breeding tactics They injured the bears and caused the cubs to be separated from their mothers too soon. For years, the authorities tolerated their online activism and criticism, which targeted both Chinese and foreign zoos.

No more. Last month, police in Sichuan province said they had arrested 12 people for defaming panda experts, inciting violence and spreading false information about pandas, including two who lived in a national zoo.

Panda influencers have been accused by authorities of harassing staff at Chinese breeding centers and getting rich from lavish live donations. Police claim to have discovered “radical animal protection gangs” in three provinces, according to state media.

In an effort to embrace the internet cultureMr Xi has waged an online war, comparing the enthusiast groups to “evil cults”. Authorities have detained sports fans for smearing Chinese athletes, arrested people who swooped into airports to greet celebrities and suspended the accounts of K-pop fans.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to questions sent Wednesday morning.

The takedown shows how fragile discourse is in China, even when the subject is a panda.

“These civilian ‘Patriots’ have sometimes been encouraged or tolerated by the government,” said Xiao Qiang, an internet freedom researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. “But when official narratives have new needs,” he added, “Panda fans can also be fined and arrested.”

Internet influencers maintain playful social media pages, where users bond over their favorite animals. These communities exploded during the pandemic, as people stuck at home turned to coils of animals that mixed on bamboo. One panda, Producthas more than 880,000 followers on the Weibo platform. A panda known for its ill-fated escape attempts, Meng Lanthere are about 380,000.

Panda fans even secured policy changes. Their activism helped push the National Forestry Bureau to improve panda housing standards and ban people from paying panda hug.

When the Beijing Zoo attached metal plates to Meng Lan’s windows last year to prevent escapes, activists flooded government lines and social media with complaints. The zoo removed the plaques and announced it would renovate the area.

It helped that advocacy was often clogged with nationalism, such as the campaign for The return of the panda gill from the Memphis Zoo in 2023.

The National Zoo was a frequent target. The zoo’s application to import the pandas Bao Li and Qing Bao caused almost 38,000 comments To the US government, some of them wrote partly in Chinese. Many commentators have mentioned the zoo’s history Invasive techniques of artificial breeding.

“Pandas are a symbol for China,” Mr Xiao said. Activism is a “unique combination of propaganda and advocacy of a certain kind” that can help “advance a political narrative,” he said.

But the government’s careful dance with Panda fans is over. The arrests last month followed the detention in June of four people who shut down a panda expert at a breeding center in western China, shouting that he was a traitor for working with foreign zoos.

In December, the state news agency Xinhua They warned fans that “irrationally exchanged love is harming the field of panda protection,” urging them to “create a good environment for the development of giant panda protection research based on science, rationality and peace.”

Authorities in Sichuan have accused a surprising middle-aged demographic of spending too much time online.

Police said one woman had spread “more than 60 rumors and defamatory videos involving giant pandas since August 2023.” They accused several of spreading misinformation on their live streams for money. Authorities have not released the full names of the people.

While a few panda fans have resorted to extreme measures, most others have reasonable demands, said Sarah Cheng, a Chinese volunteer in Singapore with the Panda Voices Group, which has organized international panda welfare campaigns.

“They just want the pandas to live better,” she said. “They want them to have bamboo shoots and real bamboo to eat.” But many of their concerns, she said, “mostly went away without a fight or being fired.”