Joe Tsai is the Canadian-Taiwanese owner of the Brooklyn Nets. He is a successful businessman, an eloquent speaker, and by all accounts a good man. But I am confused as to why he is regurgitating Chinese Ministry of State Security propaganda.
After all, Tsai’s letter attacking Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s defense of Hong Kong protesters is truly nuts (as, incidentally, is Rockets’ owner Tilman Fertitta’s bending of the knee to Beijing).
Tsai’s letter really does read like it was written by a Chinese MSS senior operations officer.
Tsai begins by lamenting Morey’s “politically charged and grossly misunderstood” defense of freedom in Hong Kong. Absurdly, Tsai then immediately contradicts his attack on Morey by defending freedom as an American value. Even more absurdly, Tsai then flips his trajectory once again, annihilating his own narrative by observing that “The problem is, there are certain topics that are third-rail issues in certain countries, societies and communities.” So we are for free speech, except when we’re against it, except when it involves speaking out against the Chinese communists. If you speak against the party, prepare to face the barrel of a gun.
Tsai clarifies things for us: Truth and honor are found in the loyal support of the party. Chinese “citizens stand united when it comes to the territorial integrity of China and the country’s sovereignty over her homeland.” Tsai continues, “This issue is non-negotiable.” To be fair to Tsai, he is not alone in the NBA. Normally woke Warriors coach, Steve Kerr joined the Communist band wagon on Monday night, explaining that he can’t comment on the oppression of Hongkongers, although that oppression is in patent breach of Chinese treaty commitments under the 1984 Sino-British declaration. Why no comment? Because Hong Kong’s situation, Kerr says, is “bizarre.”
So is most reality television. But we do not bow to Jersey Shore, do we?
That absurdity speaks to something. Tsai and Kerr’s rhetoric aside, the truth is clear and sustained. And terribly pathetic. What we’re seeing here is the NBA’s word-perfect submission to Chinese propaganda,
But the real truth, that bound to facts is also clear. Just as Tsai cites the Opium Wars to explain why Hong Kong’s struggle for freedom is actually a Western imperialist plot, the NBA’s lament against free speech is a desperate wail for cash at the cost of morality. This is the reason China is eliminating Hongkongers’ civil rights and imprisoning millions of Muslims in reeducation camps in Xinjiang. Because the benefit of the party outweighs the rights of the few and the many.
