Why the NBA Apologized to China over Daryl Morey's Tweet About Hong Kong
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Pretty disgusting really. It really shows that the dream of liberalization of China is dead, some thought that we could do it but irony strikes again and instead of opening up China our corporations and institutions have become infected and we're in the midst of The Reverse Opium War.
Creators of one of the most effective US-centric propaganda engines in recent times have an opinion that sides with the main-line US narrative that's parallel with every other op-ed article being blasted across other well-known US-centric propaganda engines.
Color me surprised.
To be clear : I have no dog in this fight personally; but South Park has been pretty obviously 'narratively - conveinent' for years. If you want to know what their opinion is going to be about a topic before the related episode just open up a page of the NY Times and radicalize the most popular op-ed opinion to the Nth.
'Team America'ify any article : bam , a new South Park episode.
Anyone paying attention during any of the Bush era wars can see this plain as day.
"Let's portray Bush as a total moron so that we can play off of public disdain for him, but let's depict his actions as successful and 'terrorists' as 'the bad guys' and the US as 'good guys' , don't want to rock the boat too bad." .
Talk about having your cake and eating it too, they get credit for being some sort of anti-PC badasses while toting the US main status-quo opinions.
It surprising how so many people on HN don't get that. No wonder they think Dropbox can be easily replaced with an SFTP service.
How is that false?
Quite the opposite. By being "disgusting" it makes itself required viewing by every school child in the country to to prove how subversive they are.
I don't see any pro US propoganda. I guess I must be brainwashed. How is the episode about Amazon pro US? How is the episode about Disney corporate hypocracy pro US? How is the episode about hiring Mexican laborers pro US? Even the movie was all about how stupid the USA around censorship and how people get offended at bad words instead of bad actions. They did nothing but make fun of Bush in every episode their Bush-like character was in. They also made fun of Bush supporters showning how stupid they were in following him.
Isn't that very much aligned with the US media though? I don't know how much criticism of South Park holds true, I haven't watched it in years, but this doesn't strike me as a counter example. Also, they can be critical of some things inside the US and be aligned with US foreign policy at the same time, those aren't mutual exclusive.
Watching from outside the US it does feel pretty solidly pro US. The core message seems to be that sure, we have some dumb politicians and occasionally our huge companies do some dumb and evil shit, but that is the aberration. The Real America is made up of fundamentally Good People striving to do the Right Thing and that will always prevail over any temporary glitches in the system. All the criticisms they levy are the same criticisms being made at the time by all Good Americans.
The show is obviously made by two people who love their country despite/because of all its flaws and that clearly shines through.
It does often have that surface-level message: Good people will always prevail, evil is a necessary part of the status quo, etc. But that's always part of the joke.
I don't think anyone leaves South Park episodes thinking "wow that is so true" and having introspective thoughts about our country. It's more like "what the fuck did I just watch" and "that's about right," dismissive of the average American lifestyle or unhappy with the problems we often face.
I'll keep that in mind though. Interesting perspective.
Sure on one hand that's the joke, but I feel they never really subvert or question that joke (again with the caveat I really haven't seen much from the last ~10 seasons or so). As long as our heroes stay true to their Real American Values nothing bad can ever happen to them. Now I could be wrong, but the way that that message permeates everything the creators make feels genuine.
I think we all should boycott the NBA and Blizzard.
Right, a US company issuing an apologetic press release to continue profiting off China is just like what China faced after the Opium Wars.
Given how tightly the Chinese government controls domestic drug production and distribution I'm very skeptical that this export operation is in-spite of Chinese government action, maybe at best they ignore it. That is what I was referencing, I think it is at least probable that the Chinese government tacitly condones the export of opioids to the US and don't lose much sleep over it. This was exactly the same thing that Britain did to China during the Opium Wars except that that also included military force whereas this is the black market approach that the US has traditionally used when they've done it.
To cut off a possible avenue of criticism, yes the US has done exactly the same thing in South America time and time again, that was wrong too.
I think you give too much credit to that government apparatus.
China has over a billion people, and if you think their government is one big well-oiled machine of surveillance and oppression, that might be a bit naïve..
Illicit drug production has been a worldwide problem forever. It's logistically impossible to keep tabs (no pun intended) on every legit lab 24/7 and even more impossible to find and shut down every illegal operation, in any country, much less one with such a massive population and also with such a production-focused economy.
Calling it a Reverse Opium War is ridiculous though, as China hasn't invaded, forced unequal treaties, or made the US cede Long Island.
I don't see a way for the NBA to come out ahead on this. Chinese investment already drives a lot of business decisions for the League, and I doubt that a civics lesson for fans and players about Chinese territorial sovereignty is going to do anything to lower the temperature. Tsai's statement comes across as particularly caustic - making an implication that Morey's tweets call into question that territorial sovereignty in the same way that e.g. Japanese invasion did. As a sports fan, it's tough to remain objective here. On the one hand, Hong Kong will integrate - baring some major geopolitical course corrections, and probably a war. On the other, it's a little disturbing to see US sports figures - who otherwise are generally untouchable, for the most part - bend over backwards to make sure they don't sufficiently enrage China (looks like it's too late) over some tweets by a GM who is pretty well liked in the League.
As a meta point, I figure this is only the beginning and we'll continue to see China flex it's financial and population muscle abroad in ways that may seem hard to predict in advance, but are pretty obvious once they happen.
[0]https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2856965-nets-governor-jo... [1]https://www.facebook.com/100001583307192/posts/2653378931391...
People in the west who complained about the great fire wall is going to be in a rude awakening when they realize walls are designed to keep things out AND in. If China actually encouraged netizens to interact abroad then every social media platform will become unrecognizable. People will beg for Chinese users to be siloed like in multiplayer games.
To add context for those that don’t follow basketball:
A lot of players that don’t end up “making it” in the NBA play in China as an alternative because: 1) China has shorter season game schedules, 2) Fans there go crazy for basketball and treat even B/C-tier NBA players like celebrities, 3) Chinese teams pay a lot of money to foreign players, 4) the CBA season ends before the end of the NBA season, so players who did well in the CBA have a chance of getting a contract with an NBA playoff team.
Jeremy Lin (asian-american NBA-veteran) is an example of an aged player that signed with the CBA after he didn’t get any NBA offers, and is making $3M this upcoming season for 38 games in the CBA after he was paid $700k last year for 82 games with Toronto.
Other players like Josh Smith, Lance Stephenson, Tracy McGrady, and Stephon Marbury also played in China too.
For the vast majority of NBA players (or elite international basketball players), this is like a short way to “go on tour”, make a ton of money, and then return back to cushy life in the US.
Will mentioning Tibet jeopardize your AWS account?
Even if you’re not an American company, you can be punished by the USA for doing business in countries that they have sanctioned.
So let’s not pretend like this is some horrible future, it’s already the present.
If someone punches you, should you not put up your guard, because you, too, have punched others?
I don't see where your parent preaches "the deserve it".
Now we know they don’t operate by principles but as everyone knew they only side with “the right thing” when it intersects with their money. And at no other time.
So much for NBA.
(I mean, I guess it ain't unprecedented, given that there are Canadian teams in the NBA, but at least Canada and the US are close geographically and culturally, while China is neither, last I checked)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hockey_League
In retrospect it makes a lot of sense; but I guess in my subconsciously Americentrist way the thought never occurred to me.
But there is hope: another Olympics is happening in 2022, they might restart another charm campaign so that isn’t a disaster.
Here's a few articles from what I guess would be contrarian authors then. [1][2] Personally I always thought the idea that China would becoming progressively democratic to be deluded. There are enough examples of well-managed authoritarian capitalism producing good results in Asia for the Chinese to not change course, to say nothing of the inherent greed of the Princelings who directly benefit from their positions of power.
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20180918212727/http://www.aei.or...
[2]https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-slow-road-democracy
So basically suck it up if you want our money.
> This event is starkly clarifying. And it should give conservatives and progressives pause, because China’s model of imposing Xi Jinping thought is a direct and equal threat to us. If Chinese authoritarianism is able to spread into American life through corporate power, because corporations are set up to serve shareholders and have trouble thinking ethically beyond that, then perhaps it is the duty of the state to interrupt the exchange mechanism through which this corruption proceeds. If China is forcing American corporations to impose Xi Jinping thought, maybe it’s time to choose.
In the same discussion we have calls to hurt China politically and economically for implementing an international treaty.
If we expect China to measure its influene in our country, we ought to show some measure.
Hong Kong was a democracy, it getting eaten up by China is horrendous.
Hong Kong was never a democracy in the modern sense. Its citizen only elect half of the members of the legislative council. And the Chief It had Rule of Law, freedoms of press and assembly and other factors, but it was never a full democracy.
The only way to make the NBA change their mind is if enough people in the US boycott the NBA to the point where they are losing more money domestically than they're making from the Chinese market
It's telling that all of it is about China, and rarely any on Kashmir, Iraq, Sudan, or Turkey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0
SCMP has been for the past few months been very supportive of the "protests", so I am not even sure why they put this video up in the first place. As we can see, these guys are not the "peaceful protesters" people would like you to believe, but more rioters or even terrorists (yeah, they threatened a 70 yr old lady). So I would say at this stage expressing support for these guys in HK are like supporting the Sandy Hook conspiracies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s... which I would imagine a similar response from the NBA.
Agreed.
> SCMP has been for the past few months been very supportive of the "protests", so I am not even sure why they put this video up in the first place. As we can see, these guys are not the "peaceful protesters" people would like you to believe, but more rioters or even terrorists
The masked, armed people in the video may be terrorists, but have you considered that the SCMP is doing a form of nonviolent protest? That if all protesters were terrorists, they'd have a larger army than the Islamic State ever had? The fact that the Hong Kong government remains in power despite their inferior numbers shows that most protesters disapprove of violent tactics just as much as you do.
You seem to have realized that a black-and-white view like "protesters are good, they should be supported" is too simple and requires more nuance, but then you went and replaced it with the black-and-white "protesters are bad, they should not be supported."
I think a better alternative is "some protesters are good, they should be supported; other protesters are bad, they should not be supported." Spend some time figuring out who fits in each bucket.
Treating groups of people as single entities with a unified will is only going to lead to confusion when they don't act like one. (That applies also to the Hong Kong police, the Hong Kong government, the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese people, and other participants in this conflict.)