Here's my take on it, as an old-fashioned viewer purely interested in good storytelling: Either include gay people as proper, fully-rounded characters integral to the narrative, or don't bother. Tokenistic, hedging nonsense of this kind pleases no one. By contrast, a TV series like The Morning Show (not Disney, I know) is a textbook example of how to feature a lesbian character and make her an integral, non-tokenistic, non-agenda/diversity quota based part of the narrative.

The issue with Disney films, as you rightly point out, is the China connection. They want to make money in that market, and ultimately money concerns trump all else. In which case, at least admit as much and stop being virtue-signalling hypocrites throwing out breadcrumbs and pretending it constitutes genuine stories about gay characters.