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> 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.

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.

Given that he was born in Taiwan, I wonder what he thinks about the territorial integrity of the PRC with respect to Taiwan. While the hk protesters demands do not (to my knowledge) generally include seccesion from china, Taiwan is much further along in that respect, de facto. In this case, it would me hypocritical for him not to promote immediate, at least partial integration (eg, abolish the roc military and have the PRC responsible for Taiwans defense). Can anyone come up with any statements from him on this topic?

The Bleacher Report article was taken down, but can be still be read here: https://web.archive.org/web/20191007075632/https://bleacherr...

Hong Kong will most likely integrate, but the situation is more fluid than it might seem on the surface. China is effectively dealing with significant civil disobedience which has sparked civil wars and regime changes seemingly over night in other countries. The breaking point is less about Hong Kong than how far the system can stretch suppressing everything from pro democracy advocates to various religious and ethnic groups.

>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.

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.