Calls to name Berlin zoo’s panda cubs ‘Hong and Kong’ spark German national debate on China

Berlin’s zoo is celebrating the safe arrival of the first panda cubs born in Germany

But a competition to name them has sparked a national debate about panda diplomacy, as the German leader visits Beijing

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Panda Meng-Meng looks at one of her newborn twin cubs at Berlin Zoo, Germany. Photo: Reuters

Published: 12:17pm, 6 Sep 2019Updated: 10:51pm, 6 Sep 2019

They may have captured the public’s imagination, but the tiny, pink panda cubs born at Berlin zoo in early September have also spurred a national debate about whether panda diplomacy is blinding Germany to the human rights record of the Chinese government.

A competition to name Meng Meng’s cubs has increased pressure on the government of Angela Merkel, who started a trip to Beijing with a large economic delegation on Thursday.

The tabloid Bild has called on Berliners to choose Hong and Kong as names for the cubs, in recognition of the protests that have been taking place in the territory for the past three months.

One of the panda cubs being bottle-fed in Berlin zoo. Photo: EPA-EFE

Der Tagesspiegel newspaper has also taken up the baton, with its readers favouring Hong and Kong above the alternatives Yin and Yang, Ping and Pong, Plisch and Plum and Max and Moritz, after a favourite German children’s story.

“Bild is choosing to call the panda cubs Hong and Kong because it’s China’s brutal politics that lies behind these panda babies,” Bild wrote in a headline story on Thursday. “Bild is demanding of the German government that it reacts in a political way to the birth of these small bears.”

Even Hong Kong activists have been pulled into the debate, with the leading protester Joshua Wong urging the zoo to call the cubs Democracy and Freedom. “That way Germany could send a very clear signal to China,” Wong told Bild.