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

As visitors and journalists queue around the block to catch a glimpse of Meng Meng’s cubs, a competition to name them has increased pressure on the government of Angela Merkel, who kicked off a trip to Beijing with a large economic delegation on Thursday.

The German 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.

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.

The animal rights campaign group Peta said it was an opportune time to draw attention to pandas’ exploitation. “The panda babies face a sad life as a public attraction. They will never get to know their natural habitat in the mountain forests of China,” said a spokesman. “They have only been bred in the first place because of politics, prestige and profit.”

Germany has been renting six-year-old Meng Meng (which means Sweet Dream) and her companion, Jiao Qing, nine – who is the cubs’ father – from the Chinese government for €1m (£900,000) a year since 2017, under an agreement valid for 15 years.

Merkel and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, opened the bears’ enclosure together amid huge fanfare, in what was billed as an expression of friendship between the two industrial power rivals.

And the pandas have proved to be the hoped-for visitor magnet. A record of 5 million visitors last year was put down to the presence of the pandas, which are by far the zoo’s most popular attraction, with the queues to see them often stretching through the zoo.

There has been no official word yet on the cubs’ future. But according to the agreement drawn up between Berlin and Beijing, the cubs officially belong to China, which will in all probability reserve its right to name them. The cubs are likely to be sent to China in about three or four years’ time when they are able to fend for themselves.

Vets and carers have been flown into Berlin from China to care for the cubs who, when they are not being breastfed by their mother, are being housed in incubators borrowed from the Charité hospital’s neonatal unit. The zoo said the public would be able to see them in November, “by which time they should look more like panda bears”, according to a spokesman, who said the zoo was expecting another surge in visitors.