It turns out Twitter may be good for something after all.
On Friday, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for the pro-Democracy protesters in Hong Kong, who have been demonstrating against their communist overlords for months. “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong,” the image he posted read.
With his bland tweet of solidarity, Morey exposed the cravenness of corporate America and revealed the self-proclaimed “wokest professional sports league” in America as a total sham.
Within hours of his tweet, the proverbial roof had caved in on Morey. China’s consulate in Houston expressed its “strong dissatisfaction.” The Houston Rockets offered a swift apology, distancing itself from its own general manager. The NBA did the same, calling the tweet “deeply offensive” and “regrettable.” Morey also retreated, deleting the original tweet and then tweeting a groveling apology.
Of course, the NBA didn’t see reason to apologize when Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai took to Facebook to disagree with Morey. Tsai, a co-founder of Alibaba, the Chinese equivalent of Amazon, called the Hong Kong protesters a “separatist movement” and their cause a “third-rail issue.”
The irony is that the NBA is seen as the most permissive professional sports league in America in terms of the amount of room it gives players to exercise free speech. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has said he’s proud the NBA is known as “the wokest professional sports league” out there.
“Political speech is their absolute right within the league,” Silver told the New York Times last year. Try telling that to Morey.
Silver eventually reassured basketball fans that the NBA still believes in free speech. “The NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues,” he said. “We simply could not operate that way.”
Well, the Chinese communist government does operate that way and it announced that it will not televise the NBA’s preseason games in China.
This is just the latest example of a U.S. corporation bowing to communist China.
American, Delta, and United Airlines gave in to China last year by deleting references to Taiwan as its own country. The Gap apologized for selling t-shirts with a map of China that didn’t include Taiwan or Tibet. Marriott International issued a cowed statement when China’s government shut down its website after the hotel company listed Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet as separate countries.
“We don’t support separatist groups that subvert the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China,” Marriott said in a statement that could have been written by the Chinese Ministry of State Security Propaganda.
This is all about money, at least for the money-grubbing American corporations. China has a consumer base worth billions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of people there have entered the middle class over the last couple of decades, and they want to spend money on things like NBA merchandise and game tickets.
Chinese tech company Tencent Holdings reports that nearly 500 million people in China watched the NBA last year. That’s an audience roughly 50% larger than the entire U.S. population. The NBA recently announced a five-year contract with Tencent to stream games in China worth a reported $1.5 billion.
The communist Chinese government already has a vice grip on its 1.3 billion subjects. Through the sheer force of its market power, now it is telling Americans what they can and cannot say.
As I’ve written here before, ever since Congress extended permanent normal trade relations to China nearly 20 years ago, pro-China pundits have argued that increased trade and engagement with Beijing would cause the communist regime to open up and embrace democratic values.
But China’s behavior hasn’t changed at all. To the contrary, Beijing has become more authoritarian and more adversarial. Doing business with China has changed us more than it’s changed them.
This episode shows once again that when push comes to shove, the NBA and many other American corporations will prioritize profits over principle, and billions of dollars over millions of lives.
What the NBA and other companies will eventually come to realize is that if and when tanks roll into Hong Kong, China will not be satisfied unless the NBA and American companies applaud while the slaughter is taking place.
At the end of the day, this is not about Chinese communists. It’s about us. The world has always had bad actors. The difference is how we respond. We want their money and they want our souls. Sadly, there are plenty of people willing to make that bargain.
Gary Bauer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
