A Dark Alliance: Communist Chinese Gov't-Tied TikTok Announces Partnership with Disney

October 17th, 2023 11:49 AM

The leftist Walt Disney Company recently chose to partner with the communist Chinese government-tied TikTok as the struggling, woke entertainment giant sputters towards its 100 year anniversary.  

TikTok announced on Oct. 13th a new four-week partnership with Disney starting Oct. 16. The new collaboration promised that the “Disney100” partnership with TikTok will feature content from Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic and ESPN.

In addition, “nostalgic theme” songs and other “iconic moments” held dearly by children would be allowed on the communist Chinese government-tied TikTok app.

Disney’s disturbing partnership with TikTok comes as the federal government investigates TikTok’s grotesque mishandling of Americans’ data and close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This partnership marks just another episode in Disney's long-standing love affair with Beijing. Ireland recently fined the CCP-tied tech giant the equivalent of $368 million for exploiting the personal info of minors.

In 2020, Disney released a live-action version of Mulan which came under heavy scrutiny when the company disgraced itself thanking government entities in the Xinjiang Province, the same province plagued by the genocide of Uyghur Muslims.

In late December of that year, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) condemned then-Executive Chairman (now CEO) Bob Iger for his company’s history of coddling the Chinese communists. “In the movie Mulan, which the director described as ‘a love letter to China’ —  well, this love letter wasn’t subtle because right in the credits at the end of Mulan, they thank the oppressive government forces who are running concentration camps right now with over 1 million Uighurs in prison. Disney gleefully thanked the jack-booted thugs that are carrying out torture and murder.”

MRC Vice President Dan Schneider found the partnership particularly heinous, noting how inappropriate it was for an entertainment company targeted at children to promote such addictive content.  Schneider said, “It's like cigarette companies, selling cigarettes with juicy fruit or blue raspberry flavors to appeal to children. TikTok is using Disney to hook kids on their poison.” 

The fact that a Beijing-genuflecting entertainment giant like Disney is allying with one of the most dangerous apps on the market is nothing short of terrifying. Earlier this year, Forbes reported that thousands of TikTok creators unknowingly had their personal financial information stored on servers in China accessible by employees there.

Federal Communications Commission commissioner Brendan Carr has made the case that there was no fix possible to protect American TikTok users other than a ban. Carr said, “[t]here simply isn't ‘a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party].’"

Furthermore, TikTok has a history of “permanently” banning users only to lift the ban shortly thereafter. MRC Free Speech America previously found that the platform had “permanently banned” 11 pro-free speech accounts. Six of those accounts were later restored with little to no explanation. TikTok did not respond to MRC Free Speech America’s request for comment at the time of publishing.

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