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#BoycottMulan Trends After Crystal Liu Yifei Supports China's Hong Kong Crackdown

"I support the Hong Kong police; you can beat me up now," read the divisive messaged shared by the film's lead actress Crystal Liu Yifei on social media.

Calls for a boycott of Disney's live-action remake of the 1998 animated movie "Mulan" were trending on social media Friday after the movie's star, Chinese-born Crystal Liu Yifei, shared a message supportive of the police crackdown on Hong Kong protesters.

The actress shared a text image Wednesday from The People's Daily, a Chinese newspaper tied to the country's Communist party, that read "I support the Hong Kong police; you can beat me up now" to her nearly 66 million followers on Weibo, a social media service similar to Twitter that is popular in China.

Lettering below read in English, "What a shame for Hong Kong."

Liu's post had been liked 78,000 times in less than a day from when it was initially shared and retweeted nearly 69,000 times.

Liu's comments have prompted the rise of the hashtag #BoycottMulan on other social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and Twitter — all of which are blocked by China's strict censorship regime. On Instagram, her comments have also become host to a showdown between pro-Beijing and pro-Hong Kong factions.

On Twitter, user Cheuk Ting Ho said she found Liu's lack of sympathy for protesters "disappointing," adding, "They are fighting for their homeland like Mulan." Another user earned over 1,300 retweets in less than 12 hours for the message, "How tone deaf do you have to be to support police brutality when you just filmed a character who is supposed to stand against oppression in its raw form?"

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