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Photo: Jasin Boland / Disney / AP
Image of the new great Disney movie “Mulan”.
Can you demand more from Disney than just quality entertainment?
Hollywood has never been good at relating to geopolitical realities, but the last great movie “Mulan” is an example of how Disney really stepped on the piano.
The film was shot in part in Xinjiang, a province in China that has been the center of attention in the world for the past three years. How the Chinese regime oppresses the locals, mostly Muslims, the Uyghurs.
Since 2017, there may be what can only be called concentration camps in Xinjiang. China initially denied their existence, but now calls them retraining camps.
About a million Uyghurs are detained there. The witnesses denounce torture and difficult conditions. Some are released but many die or disappear without a trace.
Human rights violations
Forced sterilization is common. According to the Washington Post, birth rates fell 24 percent last year. Some believe that is enough to qualify for the UN definition of genocide. In any case, these are serious violations of human rights.
China’s goal is to stifle the demands for independence that exist among some Uighurs.
Therefore, one wonders how Disney thought when writing the subtitles for “Mulan”.
Perhaps it was thought that no one would notice anything because most of the cinema visitors had already left the room long before the subtitles appeared.
In the subtitles, Disney thanks various Chinese Communist Party propaganda departments in the province, as well as the local security police in the city of Turpan, for their help in making the film possible.
Crawls through the dictatorship
In other words, it is the institutions that are responsible for locking people up in concentration camps.
That Disney thanks you is quite painful and in the rear view mirror it is not very smart for the brand.
But that’s just part of Disney’s quest for communist dictatorship.
In 1997, the company released “Kundun”, a film praising the Dalai Lama. Which caused the Beijing authorities to go up to the roof and put hooks for Disney in China. Since then, the company has tried to get back on track with the China of the dictatorship.
The following year, the then president of Disney directly apologized to the prime minister of China.
– It was an idiotic mistake. In the future, we will avoid things that offend our friends, the CEO promised.
The submission paid off. A few years ago, the company was able to open Disneyland in Shanghai.
That the current Disney administration has the same attitude is not in a way that strange. Until a few years ago, the wet dream of all large companies was to enter the giant Chinese market. It was considered necessary to lean towards China.
International pariah
The American basketball league NBA placed some of its games in China to be able to sell game jerseys, among other things. It all came to an abrupt end when a senior representative from one of the league’s teams spoke in favor of democracy activists in Hong Kong. For a time, it seemed that the NBA would strive to appease China, but the new international climate vis-à-vis the communist dictatorship made it impossible.
Because China has gone from being a dictatorship that has been treated undeservedly and benevolently by the Western world to what can almost be compared to an international pariah. This is partly due to President Trump’s trade war with China, but mostly to President Xi Jinping’s refusal to accept any form of opposition.
Photo: Mark Schiefelbein / AP
The President of Kinas, Xi Jinping.
The regime even kidnaps a Swedish citizen in Thailand, publisher Gui Minhai, and takes him to China, where he is sentenced to a long prison term in a mock trial.
Eye opener for the world
In particular, the events in Hong Kong have been a revelation to the world. Although China promised in an international agreement that the former crown colony would retain its democratic freedoms until at least 2047, that promise was broken.
China has also started to increasingly threaten the outside world when it doesn’t do what China wants. Sweden is one of the countries that has received a slap in the face.
When the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in a ruling in 2016 that China does not have the right to the entire South China Sea, China refused to accept the ruling. Instead, Beijing responded by continuing to build artificial islands in the region and threatening ships from neighboring countries, such as fishing at sea.
Yet all of this seems to have passed Disney by when they thought it was good for business to thank the oppressors.
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