It seems that Disney’s strategy was to remain silent on Liu’s overt support for what many international observers condemned as police brutality, and it worked.
For weeks, people waited to see how Disney would contort itself to make a statement that appeased its China consumers without getting accused of shilling for China in its own domestic market - the US.Ĭhina’s Biggest Rappers Are Posting an Anti-Hong Kong Protest MemeĪ pro-Hong Kong police meme created by Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily has gone viral in part due to support from an unlikely corner: clout rappersīut the boot never dropped.
On the topic of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, Disney very nearly joined the NBA in an impossible task of hedging when Mulan’s leading lady Liu Yifei publicly supported the Hong Kong police force last August, drawing cries for the company to reprimand her and issue their own statement on where it stood. Not even the NBA can say the same, despite the enormous popularity of basketball in China, having suffered a massive hit last summer after Houston Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the Hong Kong protests. Disney pulled in 614 million USD in the domestic Chinese box office for Avengers: Infinity War - the third most profitable movie ever released in China - and its wholesome brand has managed to escape damaging political entanglement. The Shanghai Disney Resort is the most profitable Disneyland park anywhere in the world. So far, Disney has done just about everything right in China, and it shows. It’s a tricky situation to be sure, and the stakes are extra high for Disney to win over the China market - it has billions of dollars in investments in the country across multiple platforms and mediums, and can’t afford to offend either its government or consumers. Like many American productions set in another country, the film’s cultural authenticity has repeatedly been called into question, but it’s also been caught up in the rapid deterioration of US-China relations. Since the first teaser trailer for the live action remake of Disney’s Mulan dropped in July of 2019, the movie has been both hotly anticipated and mired in controversies great and small.
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