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China’s war with the NBA and the frailty of the liberal order11/10/2019

China’s war with the NBA and the frailty of the liberal order

Like so much discord in the digital age, it all began with a tweet. On Friday, Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team, posted an image showing support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters. The somewhat anodyne message of solidarity — which was later removed — unleashed a fire hose of acrimony. Chinese netizens and state institutions reacted with outrage over a perceived attack on Chinese sovereignty; American politicians in an increasingly anti-Beijing Washington decried Chinese nationalism; the U.S. National Basketball Association, the league to which the Rockets belonged, found itself awkwardly caught in the middle and issued a mealy-mouthed apology that only stoked the controversy.To get more breaking news china, you can visit shine news official website.

The league later put out different statements in Chinese and English. A message posted on Chinese social media suggested NBA officials were “extremely disappointed” by what it deemed was Morey’s “inappropriate” comment. A subsequent message put out by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver purported to uphold American values on the world stage. “Values of equality, respect and freedom of expression have long defined the NBA — and will continue to do so,” Silver said Tuesday. “As an American-based basketball league operating globally, among our greatest contributions are these values of the game.”

The NBA has spent decades blazing a path into China, where it retains tens of millions of die-hard fans. The Rockets — who for years boasted towering Chinese superstar Yao Ming in their ranks — are especially popular. Their footprint in the world’s most populous nation proved deeply lucrative. But all of that steady corporate work seemed at risk in the aftermath of Morey’s tweet.

“It is not feasible to conduct exchanges and cooperation with the Chinese yet not understand Chinese public opinion,” declared China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, on Tuesday.

That same day, China’s state television network announced it would withhold broadcasts at least for this week of the NBA’s preseason games. A series of Chinese brands, including smartphone maker Vivo and the Luckin Coffee chain, severed sponsorship deals with the American league. Criticism also came from Tencent, the major Chinese tech firm that has a $1.5 billion streaming deal with the NBA. In the United States, Republican senators and Democratic presidential candidates all cajoled the NBA to stand its ground and not cave to this form of political correctness with Chinese characteristics.
hough the protests in Hong Kong have struck a particularly sensitive nerve in China, the current spat is hardly a stand-alone occurrence — and it may be a sign of things to come. “As China’s economic clout expands, its government and consumers are coercing international companies and punishing speech they deem critical, adding a growing element of unpredictability for foreign executives weighing the opportunities and risks of doing business in the country,” explained The Post’s Gerry Shih.

There were other incidents just this week. After a recent episode of the irreverent American cartoon comedy “South Park” mocked how Hollywood studios and executives create content these days in fear of Chinese censorship, Chinese censors followed through and carried out a sweeping purge of the show from Chinese streaming sites and social media pages. Blizzard, an American video game company that counts Tencent as a part investor, became the target of an Internet boycott after it banned a champion esports contestant who called for Hong Kong’s liberation and stripped him of his prize money.

In the past, other Western companies have suffered similar censure. Mercedes-Benz apologized for hurting “the feelings of the Chinese people” when it cited the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader in exile, in an Instagram post. Companies as disparate as U.S. airline Delta and Spanish fashion brand Zara both issued groveling apologies after publicly listing operations in Taiwan — which China views as a breakaway province — as a separate country from China on its website.

There’s nothing new about Chinese nationalist anger. But Beijing’s political tensions with Washington and China’s growing global clout are forcing multinational firms to pay attention. “These dynamics have gone on for a long time,” tweeted Paul Mozur, a China tech correspondent for the New York Times. “The Hong Kong protests are causing China’s underbelly of speech control to go mainstream in a huge way. The more Beijing pushes for control, the more the global narrative will slip away from it, and it won’t be pretty.”

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