Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo
Former NBA player Yao Ming, center, in Beijing last year. Yao is now president of the Chinese Basketball Association, which announced it is suspending ties with the Houston Rockets in retaliation for Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey’s tweet of support for Hong Kong anti-government protesters.
Over the past few years, the NBA has become demonstrably progressive, from league-wide solidarity against Donald Sterling’s racism to chronic on-court protests against gun violence and white supremacy to years of champions rejecting invites to the Trump White House (amid occasional tirades from coaches Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr). But everybody has a boss, I guess, and for the NBA, it appears to be China.
Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted his solidarity on Friday night with Hong Kong protesters (“Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong”). I would link to the tweet, except he deleted it, under pressure from Rockets ownership, China-based sponsors, the Chinese consulate in Houston (which told the Rockets to “correct the error”), and Chinese basketball officials. The Rockets happen to have a lot of fans in China because Yao Ming, the country’s greatest basketball export, played his career there.
The league quickly took sides, condemning Morey’s tweet for having “deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China.” The NBA’s stateside statement notably differed from the one they put out on Chinese social media, which made no mention of Morey’s right to free speech. The Ringer reports that Rockets ownership has at least discussed firing Morey over this.
Clearly money has triumphed over any pretense to moral responsibility. The Los Angeles Lakers are playing two exhibition games against the Brooklyn Nets in China this week, where the league has millions of fans. The co-founder of Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba owns the Nets. The NBA has partnerships with Chinese companies like Tencent (which vowed not to stream Rockets games this year).
Let’s not pretend basketball executives are the only ones cowed by China’s power. The subtext of Martin Scorsese’s shade at Marvel movies for being “theme parks” is that their ubiquity flows from their easy translation to the Chinese market. All scenes with even mild or implied criticism of China are routinely cut out. Hollywood thinks about Shanghai before Peoria in determining its release schedule. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg reportedly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to name his daughter. The control extends to manufacturing, food production, textiles, electronics, military equipment, and virtually everything else, with Wall Street financiers demanding the maintenance of this dominance.
When China comes up in politics, it’s usually through the lens of trade and tariffs. Their influence is so much more comprehensive. An authoritarian country has the global business community willing to bend to its wishes, and the dangers of that are profound.
