TRUMP ON CHINA • PUTTING AMERICA FIRST
I suspect Walt Disney would be disheartened to see how the company he founded deals with the foreign dictatorships of our day. When Disney produced Kundun, the 1997 film about the PRC’s oppression of the Dalai Lama, the CCP objected to the project and pressured Disney to abandon it. Ultimately, Disney decided that it couldn’t let a foreign power dictate whether it would distribute a movie in the United States. But that moment of courage wouldn’t last long. After the CCP banned all Disney films in China, the company lobbied hard to regain access. The CEO apologized for Kundun, calling it a “stupid mistake.” Disney then began courting the PRC to open a $5.5 billion theme park in Shanghai. As part of that deal, Disney agreed to give Chinese government officials a role in management. Of the park’s full-time employees, 300 are active members of the Communist Party. They reportedly display hammer-and-sickle insignia at their desks and attend Party lectures at the facility during business hours.
Like other American companies, Disney may eventually learn the hard way the cost of compromising its principles. Soon after Disney opened its park in Shanghai, a Chinese-owned theme park popped up a couple hundred miles away featuring characters that, according to news reports, looked suspiciously like Snow White and other Disney trademarks.
American companies must understand the stakes. The Chinese Communist Party thinks in terms of decades and centuries, while we tend to focus on the next quarter’s earnings report. But if Disney and other American corporations continue to bow to Beijing, they risk undermining both their own future competitiveness and prosperity, as well as the classical liberal order that has allowed them to thrive.
During the Cold War, Lewis Powell—later Justice Powell—sent an important memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He noted that the free enterprise system was under unprecedented attack, and urged American companies to do more to preserve it. “[T]he time has come,” he said, “indeed, it is long overdue—for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be marshaled against those who
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