ESPN has written a long profile about Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai, and it highlights how he has brought his support of the Chinese Communist Party to the NBA.
Tsai, the executive vice chairman of the Chinese tech company Alibaba, bought the Nets in 2019. According to ESPN, Tsai “personifies the compromises embedded in the NBA-China relationship, which brings in billions of dollars but requires the league to do business with an authoritarian government and look past the kind of social justice issues it is fighting at home.”
That is, of course, not quite accurate. For example, there is no genocide currently going on in the United States. No one’s democracy has been crushed. (And no, don’t even try to trot out some lame comparison between Hong Kong and Georgia or Texas — it doesn’t even pass the laugh test.) Still, it’s a positive sign that ESPN at least recognizes there is a tension between NBA’s political activism at home and its support for a brutal, repressive regime.
ESPN runs through the highlights of Chinese propaganda that Tsai has pushed since becoming an owner just a few years ago. He accused then-Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey of supporting a separatist movement when Morey tweeted his support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. ESPN also dropped the news that Morey’s supporters believe Tsai was the one pushing the league to fire Morey. According to the outlet, “Morey heard directly from at least one NBA owner that Tsai was pushing to fire him to appease the Chinese.”
The real victim here, though, is Tsai. Yes, the man whose company has been used to build “an intrusive, omnipresent surveillance state that uses emerging technologies to track individuals with greater efficiency” in Xinjiang thinks he is the real victim in our discourse about China.
“Tsai believes much of the criticism he receives is politically motivated by people who purposely distort his views, according to sources close to him,” the ESPN report reads.
Tsai thinks there isn’t a humans rights problem in China because about 80%-90% of the population is “very, very happy.” That apparent happiness is enough to shrug off genocide against the Uyghurs. But Tsai still happily donates to social justice causes in the U.S. Just like the NBA, Tsai is always willing to find fault with the U.S., but China must never be insulted.
It is entirely right to say Tsai “personifies the compromises embedded in the NBA-China relationship,” assuming those compromises are understood to be sacrificing all semblance of morality for pure greed.
Tsai is a propagandist whose ownership was celebrated by the NBA as yet another avenue to pursue the Chinese market. He is a coward and a disgrace, as are the league’s other owners and executives who, by their silence, agree with him.
