If there is one thing that puts Hong Kong and Xinjiang under the same political spotlight, it is Disney’s Mulan. The live-action movie tells a heroic tale of a young female warrior masquerading as a male to defend her country against Northern invaders. Well before its debut on September 4, Mulan has already sparked controversy on multiple fronts.

Part of the controversy surrounding Mulan first started a year ago when two mainlanders were beaten up by protestors occupying the Hong Kong International Airport. The duo, Xu Jinyang and Fu Guohao, were later identified an officer from Shenzhen Police Futian Branch and a reporter from the state-owned tabloid Global Times, respectively. With a blue T-shirt printed with the pro-government phrase “I Love HK Police” found in his backpack, Fu told the protestors there that, “I support Hong Kong police. You can beat me now.” Within hours, the line was paraphrased by state media as part of a propaganda campaign to condemn the protesters and to rally nationwide support for Fu. Xu, on the other hand, was rarely mentioned, apparently due to his official affiliation with the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau, whose officers are not supposed to carry out duty across the border.

Joining forces in the propaganda campaign was Liu Yifei, a Wuhan-born American citizen who played the titular role in Mulan. On her microblogging Weibo account, Liu was found sharing a post from the state-owned People Daily which cited Fu’s line followed by a statement: What a shame for Hong Kong. Echoing that statement, Liu wrote: “I also support Hong Kong police.” From there, an outcry quickly heated up on social media where Liu’s post was shared virally outside China, often along with a photoshopped picture of her in riot police gear tinted with blood and a #BoycottMulan hashtag. The actress later called the uproar stemming from her post “a very complicated situation” and admitted that she was “not an expert.” To be fair, celebrities with ties to China’s entertainment industry tend to have their opinions aligned with government rhetoric and Liu is no exception. But to pro-democracy netizens, her siding with the repressive Hong Kong police was inevitably perceived as a disgrace to the Mulan character who dares to stand up against repression.

The movement to boycott Mulan picked up momentum following the unexpected arrest of Agnes Chow, a charismatic youth activist who was charged with colluding with foreign forces under a sweeping national security law. Almost instantly after her arrest, memes contrasting Chow and Liu started proliferating across social media platforms, with Chow being hailed as the “real” Mulan. In the meantime, calls for boycotting Mulan continue to spread to places beyond Hong Kong, thanks to the Milk Tea Alliance, a decentralized democratic group in Southeast Asia named after the region’s shared cultural icon. Activists of the Alliance were seen on social media displaying protest signs at movie theatres premiering Mulan.

A new wave of outcry against Mulan reignited to an elevated level when keen-eyed moviegoers caught something bizarre on the credits screen that is arguably far more dramatic than the movie itself--special thanks were extended by Disney to a handful of governmental and municipal entities alleged to facilitate the crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. An autonomous region in northwestern part of China, Xinjiang is inhabited by Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. Lamentably, they are perhaps the most intensely surveilled population in the world, living every single day under China’s total surveillance system, with their faces scanned, voices recorded and DNA profiled. Since 2018, reports have revealed disturbing facts that the Chinese government built high-security mass internment camps in the region to detain and persecute more than one million Muslim ethnic minorities under the guise of re-education and vocational training. Women living outside the camps are subject to forced birth control, triggering a plunge in birth rate among ethnic minorities. Children are told by local authorities to keep quiet about their missing parents. Mosques have long been demolished. All are part of Xi Jinping’s effort to eradicate “religious extremism” in the region where Islam is practiced primarily. The chief enforcer of Xinjiang’s systemic clampdown is Chen Quanguo, a Communist Party’s secretary who ordered his subordinates to “round up everyone who should be rounded up.” In July, Chen was sanctioned against by the U.S. government under the Magnitsky Act for engaging in “serious human rights abuse.”

Despite all these ongoing atrocities, Xinjiang still offers a wealth of unique landscapes as backdrops for the filming of Mulan. In fact, this is the official line taken by Disney’s management in response to mounting criticisms against the studio’s “partnership” with Xinjiang authorities. Recognizing the negative publicity surrounding the China-themed movie, Beijing has mandated a media blackout on coverage of Mulan ahead of its release, likely as a way of damage control against further embarrassment to the regime. The movie reportedly suffers a lackluster debut in China, generating USD23.2 million in box office receipts.

In many ways, the ill-fated Mulan is bound to become a major setback to Beijing’s aggressive scheme of manipulating the kinds of stories to be told through movies. It is common knowledge that studios censor their movies for a theatrical run in China, unavoidably at the expense of free speech and universal value. For this reason, topics touched upon the sensitive issues of Hong Kong protesters or Xinjiang internment camps are all missing from Hollywood blockbusters while “Chinese elements” coming out of nowhere are often showcased (consider Fan Bingbing’s peculiar appearance in the China-only version of Iron Man 3). Fortunately, the problems arising from self-censorship in the movie industry have recently caught Washington’s attention. U.S. secretary of state Michael Pompeo delivered a speech on China and the free world’s future in July, denouncing Hollywood for self-censoring “even the most mildly unfavorable reference to China.” At a time when self-censorship has become the norm, it is imperative for freedom-loving individuals to be vigilant against propaganda that seeks to exert influence over our popular culture. After all, movies should not be used as a means to increase an authoritarian regime’s status or to legitimize its wrongdoings. Perhaps this is the message that most people would remember about Mulan.

(Dr Jack Kwan Chi-pong, MIT-trained consultant based in Boston)

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