“Disney CFO Admits Filming ‘Mulan’ in Xinjiang Has ‘Generated A Lot of Issues’”, 11 September 2020

Disney’s chief financial officer Christine McCarthy acknowledged… that the company’s choice to shoot parts of “Mulan” in China’s Xinjiang region has “generated a lot of issues for us.”

The corporation has come under fire for shooting portions of the live action epic in the northwestern region where an estimated one million members of the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority have been placed against their will in internment camps as part of an effort to forcibly assimilate them with China’s majority Han population. Some have been subjected to forced sterilizations and abortions, recent reports show, with former detainees describing torture and inhumane treatment.

In its credits, the film gives “special thanks” to eight different Chinese government organs in Xinjiang, a number of which, such as the Turpan Bureau of Public Security, are directly involved in the campaign that critics have deemed a cultural genocide.

Much of “Mulan” was shot in New Zealand, but crews also filmed at 20 locations in China to show “some of the unique landscapes” there, McCarthy said at a Bank of America conference, according to Bloomberg News…

McCarthy said that filming in China requires government approvals and “it’s common to acknowledge in a film’s credits the national and local governments that allowed you to film there.”

In a tacit nod to the controversy of doing so, she said: “It has generated a lot of publicity. Let’s leave it at that.”…

McCarthy did not speculate on whether the firm was concerned that the international condemnation would be bad for business, saying: “I’m not a box office predictor.”