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Woke NBA groveling for China

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Alma, Oct 7, 2019.

  1. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

  2. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Fans with signs about Hong Kong and the Uighurs are having them confiscated at Wizards game tonight. An aspiring Democratic presidential candidate could do worse than buy a ticket for another of these exhibitions with the Chinese team and show up with his or her own sign.
     
  3. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

  4. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    The NBA is the only league where players and coaches have more clout than owners. If Pop, Steph, LeBron and Kerr all said "we stand with Hong Kong" there is exactly shit the NBA could do to them or would even try.
     
  5. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Their shoe sponsors might have something to say to them though.
     
  6. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    Whose side was Harden on?
     
  7. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Oh, I don't think so. The blowback to those companies (especially their deals with American universities) would be way more intense than what the NBA is experiencing.
     
  8. TrooperBari

    TrooperBari Well-Known Member

    In which the World-Wide Leader in Sports grants China not only Taiwan but the whole damn South China Sea. Good thing ESPN isn't doing any spots in the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, or Indonesia any time soon.
     
  9. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    Don’t know why China is taking it out on the players who’ve been either openly supportive of China or have followed China’s instructions and remain silent.
     
  10. TrooperBari

    TrooperBari Well-Known Member

    Economic coercion is a blunt instrument -- it's designed to exact maximum pain, not target specific actors. There were South Koreans who didn't agree with the deployment of the THAAD system and Filipinos who didn't want to press their country's claims in the South China Sea, but they all suffered when China took punitive actions against their governments (banning tourists, sanctioning firms, slowing/stopping imports, etc.). The CCP and central government have made their stance clear -- any challenge to China's internal stability and/or core interests will be met with vehement outrage and swift retribution.
     
  11. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Here's one of the things that gets me about this story... (And @TrooperBari , this is aimed entirely at the tweet you posted, not at you...)

    People keep acting like everyone knows the issues involved here and that they are knowledgeably picking sides.

    That China map in the ESPN clip? I work in TV. I once asked my graphics department for a map and they put our state in the wrong place. I'm not going to take a map on ESPN as some great political statement. They're probably lucky they got the right country.

    And the notion that the players are "openly supportive of China"... I mean, are we assuming that James Harden has been studying the history of Hong Kong's relationship with mainland China and has concluded that protestors are out of line in their demands for self-rule and political freedom? Or, has he landed in a country where billions of people are pissed at him because of something his boss said, and he's trying to say "uh, hey, love you guys, we're cool"?

    There's a lot of stuff going on here, and the league has slowly come around to the only real stance it can take -- Daryl Morey can say whatever he wants -- and will let China take it wherever they decide to take it. Silver tried to minimize the damage and quickly discovered China was having none of it. At this point the NBA needs to walk away.

    Still dying to know what Morey was thinking.
     
    sgreenwell and Inky_Wretch like this.
  12. TrooperBari

    TrooperBari Well-Known Member

    No worries. I appreciate the thought. On the China graphic -- admittedly this stuff is particularly on my radar. I'm doing a graduate degree in International Relations and spent three hours on Tuesday debating the South China Sea issue and the legality of China's maritime claims. That particular image is highly charged for everyone in the neighborhood who's not China and came damn close to starting an international incident. I can see how someone who had no knowledge of (or interest in) the matter might just grab the first vaguely China-shaped image they found and move on with their life. Given the heightened political sensitivities at hand and the Disney Corporation's vested interest in keeping the PRC government as sweet as possible, though, it seems odd and perhaps unfortunate that they settled on the most CCP-friendly image available.

    As for your other thought, I wonder how much of the reaction revolves around cheap heat. There's an authoritarian, communist government on the other side of the world that's actively silencing dissent at home and abroad versus a scrappy bunch of revolutionaries crying out for freedom of speech and democracy. (That seems to be the popular US conception, anyway. Never mind that this all grew out of Hong Kongers wanting Beijing to stop kicking their representatives out of the Legislative Council and live up to the deal it made with the UK prior to the 1997 handover, with independence a fringe demand at best.) It's a situation that's practically tailor-made for Americans to jump in with both feet on the latter's behalf. There's no incentive for moderation or greater nuance, which might help explain the swift (if selective) return of bipartisan consensus on foreign policy among Congresscritters -- you're a champion of democracy and free speech if all goes well, you fought valiantly for What Is Right (TM) in the face of overwhelming odds if it doesn't.

    On the China side, you have exactly what the Party has been warning you about for decades. A bunch of ignorant Western imperialists are rocking up on your southern shores, demanding your money, and instigating revolution in an attempt to keep China down and make it do things the way the West thinks it should -- it's the Opium Wars all over again. Plus, no one with any connection to the government wants to be seen slacking in upholding the Party line on the sanctity of national sovereignty and rejection of foreign meddling. This is especially true in an era when Xi Jinping has all but made himself President for Life and is vigorously trying to revive the influence and purity of "socialism with Chinese characteristics". Bringing home the bacon isn't enough to get ahead anymore -- you also have to be seen as an upstanding Party member who fiercely safeguards the safety and dignity of the motherland.



     
    PCLoadLetter likes this.
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