The recent blackout does not appear to be uniform. On Weibo, a Twitterlike site, it was still possible on Monday to write posts and upload images related to Winnie-the-Pooh. But posting comments on existing posts that included the term Winnie the Pooh, who is known in Chinese as xiao xiong wei ni (or “Winnie the Little Bear”), was more problematic, returning an error message.

After a fresh round of news reports about the censorship on Monday, including on the front page of The Financial Times, Chinese internet users took to social media sites to test the ban. Some seemed to be mocking the foreign news media, taking pride in being able to freely post pictures of the honey-loving bear.

“He’s so cute, who could he have offended?” wrote one Weibo user.

“Winnie-the-Pooh is also banned?” another asked. “Should everything related to Winnie-the-Pooh in Shanghai Disneyland be removed too?”

Censors have been on high alert since the death last week of Liu Xiaobo, a jailed pro-democracy activist and Nobel laureate who had been battling liver cancer, which prompted an outcry.