The NBA and China

Wow, what a week or so for the NBA. One tweet from the Rocket’s General Manager sent China into a hissy fit and a lot of its fans. Everybody who is somebody had a take on this mess. The General Manager put out a tweet in support of the Hong Kong protesters, who are looking for their freedom back from the Chinese government.

Just a brief history on Hong Kong. Hong Kong was under British rule from 1842 until 1997. Japan occupied Hong Kong from 1941 to 1945 during World War II. In 1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed an agreement with the Chinese to hand power back to the Chinese. Part of that agreement was that communist China would allow Hong Kong to enjoy all of the western freedoms for 50 years. Post World War II Hong Kong basically became the New York City of Asia. A lot of the financial power brokers did business in Hong Kong.

Fast forward to 2003, protests over Article 23, Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23 is an article in the Basic Law of Hong Kong. It states that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region “shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies.” An attempt to implement the article was the National Security Bill 2003 which caused a great controversy and a massive demonstration on 1 July 2003. Since then, the bill of implementing the article has not been reintroduced.

The 2016 Legislative council election saw the localists emerging as a new political force behind the pro-Beijing and pan-democracy camps by winning six seats in Hong Kong’s geographical constituencies. However, six candidates were barred from contesting by the Electoral Affairs Commission, due to their association with the Hong Kong independence movement. Another six localist members who were elected were disqualified in the Hong Kong Legislative Council oath-taking controversy. After the 5th Hong Kong Chief Executive Election, Carrie Lam became the first female Chief Executive of Hong Kong. However, her proposal of the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019 has led to mass demonstrations against its implementation. The bill would make it legal for China to extradite criminals from Hong Kong, potentially including political prisoners. It is feared that the bill would cause the city to open itself up to the reach of mainland Chinese law and that people from Hong Kong could become subject to a different legal system.

These last two paragraphs I got directly from Wikipedia just to show how you could become somewhat informed in a pretty short time. Now I am no politician but I think I could make a somewhat informed opinion from what i just read. So my opinion would be that the people of Hong Kong are standing up for their “western rights” provided by the agreement in 1984. Every company doing business in China has to aqueous to certain western practices China does not approve, that is the nature of doing business overseas. It is estimated that the NBA makes about 4 billion a year in China alone. I heard this morning that Lebron himself does about 1 billion in business in China.

Here is my take. This whole thing came down to money. Bad timing of the tweet by the Rocket’s General Manager. Adam Silver had to appease the fans in America and his business in China. Lebron, since he is the face of the NBA, was harassed about his opinion. The social justice warriors being the NBA and Lebron had to put themselves in bad positions to save the money they make out of China. I say social justice warriors because both parties have put themselves out there to the public in America as an organization and an individual who will stand up for oppression of people. They were in a no win situation. The Rocket’s General Manager, I don’t feel was at fault either, people in Hong Kong have been shot in the street. In the end it shows where the priority is, the all mighty Dollar.