Disney's China Program Is No Laughing Matter
A missing Tiananmen episode from “The Simpsons” shows that corporate America’s difficulty reconciling business with free speech now extends to Hong Kong.
Disney has a lot at stake in China, including $5.5 billion invested in its Shanghai theme park.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergWalt Disney Co.’s newly introduced streaming service in Hong Kong has an episode missing from “The Simpsons” that satirizes China’s suppression of information about the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. The omission, and the subsequent silence from the entertainment company’s public relations spokespeople, is a sign of how corporate America continues to grapple uncomfortably with how to engage in a market that doesn’t share the U.S. commitment to freedom of speech.
Jamie Dimon gave the most recent demonstration of that awkward embrace when the JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief executive officer quipped last week that his bank was likely to outlast the Communist Party, only to backpedal a day later, saying that he regretted and “should not have made” the comment. It’s a difficult line to straddle. While Dimon reversed himself to avoid the risk of upsetting the government in China, Disney may find that back home is where it has some explaining to do.