Universal Studios will be opening a one thousand acre theme park resort in the Tongzhou subcenter district of Beijing in 2021. It will, of course, include the Wizarding World attractions that have been the foundation of Universal’s success with their Orlando, Los Angeles, and Tokyo parks. The largest Universal resort in the world has been the subject of site visits and negotiations between the capitalist corporation and the totalitarian regime in China since 2002. See the China.org.cn announcement, ‘Universal Beijing Resort Annonces 2021 Opening,’ and the SnitchSeekers.com bulletin that includes the breathless excitement of a Comcast Corporation conference call on the subject.
China is the world’s largest market of consumers so I suppose this was inevitable. It is simultaneously as lamentable as any money-making venture must be that supports perhaps the most criminal and dangerous political regime on planet Earth. I know there are few if any White Knight governments in the world today, but the de facto dictatorship in Beijing and
- their systemic cultural genocide via Han immigration in Tibet,
- their forced labor concentration camps for more than one million Muslims in Xinjiang,
- their continued nation-wide coerced abortion and forced sterilization programs and other crimes against women and children,
- their militarization of the China Sea and waters off the Philippines,
- their Stalinist persecution of Christians and other religious minorities,
- and their Tiananmen Square-esque behaviors in Hong Kong
— make China stand alone and above all other nightmare states in the size and depth of their crimes. Only North Korea, a Chinese puppet government, is even close. Will we see a Pyongyang theme park soon for the ‘Haves’ in the Hermit Kingdom to enjoy?
Shame on Universal Studios for this collaboration, by which they make themselves and their stock holders participants in the crimes committed by the Orwellian regime.
Disney is in China so I guess Universal decided they could cash in as well!
Check out the business being done at Hong Kong’s Disneyland this year!
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/hong-kong-disneyland-demonstrations-intl-hnk-scli/index.html
I see your point, and I hear the frustration. I wonder if there is any hope of the HP-Universal Park and the powerful messages of the HP books bringing some element of hope to China? Maybe something good can come out of this? Hope of tolerance, kindness, the power of love, and hope.
My apologies for taking so long to second you heartily on this!
(It is curious to think that FB1 takes place in the year after the death of the Rev. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, and FB2 in the year of the beginning of the Chinese Civil War. If FB3 is set in part in China, it will be interesting to see in how far the contemporary realities are permitted to feature in the story.)
‘Rolling Stone’ magazine calls out the National Basketball Association for their kowtowing to the Chinese autocrats and their throwing the Hong Kong protesters under the bus. Read that article here.
In addition to walking back a coach’s comment in favor of the Hong Kong resistance, the NBA has a basketball training camp in Xinjiang, just down the road from the concentration camps where more than a million indigenous Muslims are imprisoned.
These cowards — to include James Harden of the Rockets! — are making Universal Studios look like relatively blameless fellow travelers.
The Testimony of Concentration Camp Survivors
Mainland China invaded the Crown Colony of Hong Kong in 1967 (by sending in masses of Cultural Revolutionary Maoists)to try to get the British to leave before the lease was up. (See “Hong Kong 1967 leftist riots” on Wikipedia.) That experience let people in Hong Kong know what to expect from the mainland government after the British lease on Hong Kong expired.