Global politics and visiting Disney theme parks (careful now)

My son’s business school took his class on a trip to China, to study their business models. He said that a professor at a university they visited there made a convincing argument for their system. They also rode on elephants. I’m sure he would have no problem going to Disney. :slight_smile:

I would probably go, but I tend to go to China fairly often anyway. My daughters were born in China and we adopted them in 2001 and 2003. I co-founded a nonprofit that primarily supports the orphanage where they lived prior to adoption. Most of my trips to China have been on behalf of our organization. It is not that I am blind to the human rights abuses … but we are trying to do something good via our organization for those orphans, most of them disabled. I never really considered going to the Disney parks in Shanghai or Hong Kong until watching the Imagineering series. Now I really want to go and it would be hard not to tack that on to another trip. Don’t know when that will be, however. I did just go in June 2019.

This is off topic, and not to say I approve of President Xi, but in 2015 he visited the US, including Seattle, and made a special trip to my daughter’s high school in Tacoma. Long before he was President, he was a leader in Fuzhou during the time they were forging a sister city relationship with Tacoma so he has ties to our city. It was a very big deal for him to visit the high school. They shut down I-5 which created all sorts of havoc. Crazy stuff. This high school has a lot of poor students and is majority minority. President Xi invited 100 students to visit China paid for by the Chinese government. The next fall, 98 students and about 15 staff set off on the journey. A coalition of Hong Kong business people (coordinated by a local person with ties to Hong Kong) paid for international air fare and a few days in Hong Kong including spending money for all of the kids. Then China picked up the tab from there and the kids visited Fuzhou (sister city), Chengdu (pandas) and Beijing. It was an amazing trip for a bunch of kids who don’t get to do stuff like that. Many of them had never left the state or flown on a plane. It was life changing. My daughter was one of the students chosen through an application and lottery process to go on the trip. I almost felt guilty because she is well traveled by any definition but especially compared to her school mates. But so happy she had the experience. Chinese media covered it extensively and the government and Xi were criticized for spending money on these American kids when so many are in need in China.

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I think I wouldn’t avoid visiting a whole country in general due to political/humanitarian reasons, but I would avoid doing things in country that directly support an abhorrent regime or policy. For instance, the government is part owner of the Disney properties in China, so I wouldn’t visit them. I would be tempted, but there are plenty of other relevant cultural things to see and do that aren’t directly tied to the regime.

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