Marvel President Kevin Feige claims to regret whitewashing a Tibetan character in one of the studio’s films. You can be forgiven for thinking he’s not sincere.

In an interview with Men’s Health magazine, Feige acknowledges it was wrong to cast a white actress, Tilda Swinton, in the role of the Ancient One for Marvel’s 2016 film Doctor Strange. The Ancient One is typically portrayed as a Tibetan character, but Feige said the studio feared that a true representation of the character would contribute to “a bad stereotype.”

That’s the same excuse Feige fell back on in 2016, but it’s not the justification that screenwriter C. Robert Cargill gave at the time. Cargill said that they didn’t want to risk losing access to the Chinese market by deciding to “get political” and that director Scott Derrickson suggested casting a woman in the role to offset the whitewashing.

It paid off. Doctor Strange made $109 million at the Chinese box office, nearly one-fifth of its global earnings. Marvel later smashed more than 30 records in China with Avengers: Endgame, which made over $600 million in its China run.

It’s hard to take Feige’s regret too seriously when he not only refuses to mention China in his mea culpa but touts a new film about the “fairly obscure” character Shang-Chi in the very same interview. “It’s about having a foot in both worlds,” Feige says. “In the North American world and in China.”

Pandering to China is nothing new for Marvel. The studio invited Chinese regulators to the set of its 2013 film Iron Man 3 to avoid anything that would offend Xi Jinping's sensibilities. It’s not new for Marvel’s parent company Disney either, which has repeatedly pandered to China's regime after angering Chinese officials with the 1997 film Kundun, which was sympathetic to the Dalai Lama.

Feige isn’t really sorry for any of this. Why would he be? The film, and Marvel’s cinematic universe, are popular in China. The whitewashing of a Tibetan character was sufficient to bypass any anger that could have seen Disney scrambling to re-enter the Chinese market, as it did after Kundun. If it came down to it, there’s little doubt that Feige and Marvel would make the same decision again. Appealing to social justice activists is only the second-biggest priority in Hollywood these days. Appealing to China is at the top of the list, as Marvel and Disney both know, and social justice will always take a backseat to the Chinese box office.