The National Zoo in Washington, D.C. is sending its three giant pandas — Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji — back to China following the lapse of a 50-year-old exchange pact. Pandas in the United States under a program that was an early symbol of U.S.-China goodwill are leaving as relations are strained by disputes over geopolitics, technology, trade and human rights. After a male panda at the Memphis Zoo died in February, two months before his slated return to China, Chinese social media lit up with false claims that pandas had been regularly mistreated and malnourished by the zoo.
