Sen. Hawley slams Disney’s shout out to China for help with new live-action ‘Mulan’
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who already has gained national attention for comments about China, had more to say Tuesday, this time involving Disney’s new live-action version of “Mulan.”
Hawley took issue with the final credits, where the company expressed gratitude to a Chinese agency that has been accused of human rights violations.
“This is nice. Disney now THANKING in its movies the #China ‘security bureau’ involved in #Uyghur concentration camps!” Hawley tweeted. “This is the woke capital idea of ‘social responsibility’ #slavefree”
Hawley isn’t the only one critical of Disney on this issue. Washington Post contributor Isaac Fish labeled the film as a “scandal,” while reporting that more than one million Muslims in Xinjiang — a location where part of the movie was filmed — have been placed into concentration camps that have included forced sterilization.
“Disney, in other words, worked with regions where genocide is occurring,” Fish wrote, “and thanked government departments that are helping to carry it out.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Hawley released a letter to Disney CEO Robert Chapek that asked whether he planned to remove the film from the digital platform Disney+ “in order to avoid any further glorification of Xinjiang or validation of the Chinese Communist Party officials and agencies responsible for the atrocities in that province.”
Hawley labeled Chapek’s approval of the film’s release without an apology to those harmed by Disney’s actions as “reprehensible.”
China has been a frequent target for Hawley. In a July open letter to NBA commissioner Adam Silver, he accused the league of deepening its ties with the Chinese Communist Party. Following Hawley’s press release on that topic, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski replied to a Hawley email with profanity, which led to a short suspension without pay.
In 2019, Hawley also warned about the potential dangers of the social media platform TikTok as it relates to the safety of American teens.
“A company compromised by the Chinese Communist Party knows where your children are, knows what they look like, what their voices sound like, what they’re watching and what they share with each other,” Hawley said then.
This story was originally published September 9, 2020 at 10:58 AM.
