First it was Captain America milling around outside. Then, Mickey and Minnie Mouse encouraging shoppers to visit a clothes shop. By the time a Stormtrooper was spotted at China’s newest theme park, developed by Dalian Wanda Group to be what founder Wang Jianlin has called a Disneyland killer, it became clear the Chinese really have a taste for Disney characters.

On Saturday Wanda opened its first city-theme-park located an 8-hour drive from Shanghai in a city called Nanchang. The week before, Wang, China’s richest man, said his company’s parks would ensure that Disney’s new Shanghai Disneyland is unprofitable for the next decade.

Wanda invested $3.5 billion into the Nanchang project, which features an outdoor amusement park with three roller coasters, an indoor movie theme park and aquarium, several resort hotels (including one claiming to be six-star quality), as well as a traditional Wanda shopping mall with foreign clothes shops and a Dairy Queen. What it did not feature was popular Chinese cartoon or superhero characters on par with Disney’s.

It was around the Wanda Mall where Captain America and Snow White floated around for pictures. The poorly costumed Stormtrooper stood next to the Wanda Movie Park. Disney owns Marvel (Captain America) and Lucasfilm (Stormtroopers).

A Stormtrooper outside Wanda’s theme park in Nanchang.Photograph by Scott Cendrowski

首先，你会看到在主题公园外面“巡逻”的美国队长。然后，在一家服装店外有米老鼠在吸引购物者。在中国最新开业的主题公园内，你还会发现帝国突击队员。显然中国消费者确实非常喜欢迪士尼（Disney）的电影角色。大连万达集团（Dalian Wanda Group）的创始人王健林称，由其公司开发的主题公园将成为“迪士尼杀手”。

上周六（5月28日），万达集团的第一座城市主题公园，在距离上海8小时车程的南昌市正式开业。此前一周，中国首富王健林曾放言，他的公司开发的主题公园，会让上海迪士尼在未来十年内无法盈利。

万达集团在南昌项目投入了35亿美元，项目包括有三座过山车的户外游乐场，一座室内电影乐园和水族馆，多家度假酒店（包括号称六星级品质的酒店），以及传统的万达购物中心，内有许多国外服装品牌和DQ冰淇淋店（Dairy Queen）。但主题公园内并没有可以与迪士尼动画人物匹敌的中国卡通人物或超级英雄。

美国队长和白雪公主在万达购物中心内四处游荡，与游客合影。打扮拙劣的帝国突击队员，就站在万达电影乐园的旁边。迪士尼拥有漫威（Marvel）（美国队长）和卢卡斯影业（Lucasfilm）（帝国突击队员）。

Disney wasn’t pleased with news of the slapdash costumes. It said it would “take action to address infringement” in a statement yesterday. Wanda responded, saying it hadn’t hired the characters and it couldn’t control the promotional activities of the retailers in its mall.

Disney may have forgiven Wanda had Wang not been so strident in his challenge to Disney, whose characters he criticized in comments on China’s state-run national television last week. “The frenzy of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and the era of blindly following them have passed,” Wang said in a CCTV interview. The comments were a publicity stunt, but it surely caught the attention of Disney when Wang said his parks would ensure that Disneyland in China would be unprofitable over the next 10 to 20 years.

At the Nanchang opening on Saturday, Wang struck a similarly nationalistic tone. “Chinese culture led the world’s for 2,000 years, but for the last 300 years, because of our lagging development and the invasion of foreign cultures, we have lacked confidence in our own culture,” Wang said in a speech at the Nanchang grand opening. Wanda has said it wants to promote Chinese culture in its entertainment and tourism ventures. The facade of the Wanda shopping mall in Nanchang, for instance, is shaped like Chinese porcelain.

Nanchang is a city of 5 million known for its Ford factory. It has a GDP per capita of around $6,500 and is designated a “third tier” city in China, in the shadow of Tier 1 cities Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

It is also home to the ascendant Chinese middle class that Wanda is betting will visit theme parks closer to home in lieu of Shanghai’s Disneyland. The business model has similarities to Six Flags in the U.S., which offers consumers regional theme parks because not every American can afford a trip to Disney World.

Unlike Six Flags, however, Wanda has the huge financial support of local governments. In Nanchang, Wanda’s new “Cultural Tourism City” features rows of new apartments and roads and was built in cooperation with the provincial government. Wanda’s theme parks are the centerpiece of local governments’ development plans, which remain heavy on investment and infrastructure buildout amid China’s total debts, which are now reaching 280% of GDP.

Wanda plans to open 15 to 20 theme parks in its latest business pivot changing the company from a real estate developer to an entertainment company. It’s as if U.S. mall developer Simon Group decided one day to emulate Universal Studios. Wanda says overall revenue rose 19% in 2015 to $45 billion, and most was driven by real estate. By 2018 it expects to earn two thirds of revenues from services, including entertainment and tourism.

Despite recent squabbles, the fight over theme park visitors will be bigger than just Wanda and Disney. In the next five years, Universal Theme Parks, Six Flags, and handfuls of Chinese companies are set to open new parks in China.