In China, Deals Thought to Be With Disney Turn Out Less Than Magical<br />By SUI-LEE WEEMARCH 29, 2017<br />BEIJING — In 2013, Meng Dekai, a Disney executive in China, signed a deal with the mayor of Hefei to build a $1.3 billion "Disney cultural<br />and industrial park." It was one of several agreements with multiple cities in China that Mr. Meng apparently signed.<br />The company said it started the investigation after The Paper, a Chinese news website, reported in February<br />that Mr. Meng had signed deals for projects with several Chinese cities.<br />And the Hefei Network, a news website, said in 2013<br />that the "Disney project" that Mr. Meng signed with the city’s mayor, Zhang Qingjun — who has since been dismissed for corruption — would stretch across 1,300 acres and be built over three years.<br />The Walt Disney Company said on Wednesday that it had parted ways with Mr. Meng — it did not say whether he resigned or was fired — after opening an investigation into allegations<br />that he had signed deals with local governments for Disney-related projects.<br />The Henan Daily said on its public account on WeChat, an instant-messaging app in China,<br />that Walt Disney Company (China) Limited had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Henan government to build a site in Zhengzhou, which could include "even the Disneyland parks that everyone knows so well." "Disney is here!<br />What was he thinking?" Along with the Hefei deal, Mr. Meng, who was employed by Disney as a director of special projects,<br />signed agreements in the cities of Ningbo, on the eastern Chinese coast, and Zhengzhou, in the center of the country.
