Except China already banned the NBA for a year due to some seriously softball comments over HK with zero domestic repercussions. It’s just set to unban now. While this was during covid and people were obviously distracted, your scenario had already happened, and you didn’t even realize it because nobody in China cared!
The Chinese government controls the message completely. The NBA is banned? It’s the NBAs fault for interfering in China’s domestic affairs.
Uighers have been demonized as terrorists in Chinese society for two decades. Imagine if Texas was the main source of “Radical Islamic Terrorism”, and there was a program to reducate Texas Islams into good Christians. Take a good hard look at your MAGA neighbors and think, what percentage of Americans would be full throatedly in support of the program? What percentage would just be silent about it? Then add that criticism of the program would be considered treason, and then see how much of the population objects.
I know a lot of very “moral” people (good to their families, employees, give to the poor, etc), western educated Chinese professionals, who support the uigher program entirety. I don’t think fundamentally they are much different than we are, they are products of their environment.
This is the same America that put the Japanese in internment camps half a lifetime ago. We might think we’re so much better now, but are we? Imagine Trump crushed covid with the efficacy that the Chinese government did. Is it hard to imagine that he would now be ahead in the polls by 10, 20%? He wins and puts in place Islamic reduction camps and prosecutes all criticism as sedition.
Unlikely? Remember we just, last week(!), confirmed a Supreme Court Justice that supports gay conversion re-education therapy. She was on the board of a school that banned all gay students from admission, and even the straight kids of gay parents! This is who we have picked as the successor to RBG.
Thanks for taking the time to really engage with the post. This is the strongest argument against this, that’d they would just shut it off and folks really wouldn’t care. They did blackout some games, upload feeds later after they could make sure materials were scrubbed of #freehongkong, etc. A think a longer-term, more comprehensive ban would make people more upset.
This idea is not even really a solution, it’s more like a hail mary pass when you’re down 8 with 3 minutes left. Will it work? Probably not, but it sure is higher than running the ball (essentially our collective response at the moment).
I agree that there is surprising support for current internment from otherwise normal, nice people. I think putting a face on children separated from their mothers make help this. I also agree that we are not, in a broad sense significantly more moral people (look what we did at Gitmo etc). I do, however, have a sense that bad things happen in America, but generally (at least compared to other places), once they get enough media exposure we correct them. Perhaps this is just a naive view of mine, but it’s strongly held.
Thanks for your response! I’ve worked in and around China for a long time and also read extensively on China (highly recommend “The Party” by Richard McGregor). So while I am not an expert by any means, I have at least a base of knowledge and experience more than the average joe.
Honestly, the NBA doesn’t have the moral compass to take this sort of action, nor does really any large US corporation. Even Google only pulled out of China when it didn’t matter. They were so behind in search and maps in Baidu, so when they left “due to censorship”, it didn’t affect their bottom line at all.
Also, people just don’t care as much about sports in China as in the US. Yeah, there are 600 million “fans”, but we are using that word in the broadest sense. The most hardcore of these will find ways to watch games if they are banned, the rest will just shrug it off. Even Apple, perhaps the most loved western brand in China, could be banned tomorrow and 90% of Apple users would just shrug and switch to a Huawei phone.
Perhaps I’m jaded, but I am not optimistic that anything can or will be done at this point, and certainly not from the private sector. In the public sector… western governments have failed so miserably at COVID that controlling it and recovering from the economic impacts are all they will care about in the next five to ten years. The eastern democracies that have handled COVID well are too economically tethered to China. They might make some noises, but won’t take any real action.
I’m definitely afraid that this is the most likely outcome. It’s a classic collective action problem. It’s interesting that the NBA will take action on social issues, but you could look at those and say they’ll only do it if it helps them financially, not if it will actually affect the bottom line. It would take concerted efforts from players (such as Enes Kanter) to get them to do anything. You would only have to convince 400 people in the league to make something like this happen-much smaller than trying to move the state dept. etc.
You may be correct, that at the end of the day folks just don’t care about sports very much. If you think there is a core fanbase of around 100 million people rabid fans in China, I believe that may be enough to move the needle. Again, this is not a high percentage play, but I think it’s an interesting option, that’s higher than the other options I see on the board to try to prevent this really bad thing from happening.
I think 100m is overstating the hardcore fan base by at least a factor of 10. You can do some fermi analysis to come up with a better ballpark number. Start with the middle class, further segment by young males, further segment by interest in NBA, then multiply by a hardcore fan factor ratio, which you could estimate by taking the ratio in the USA and applying a discount rate.
Except China already banned the NBA for a year due to some seriously softball comments over HK with zero domestic repercussions. It’s just set to unban now. While this was during covid and people were obviously distracted, your scenario had already happened, and you didn’t even realize it because nobody in China cared!
The Chinese government controls the message completely. The NBA is banned? It’s the NBAs fault for interfering in China’s domestic affairs.
Uighers have been demonized as terrorists in Chinese society for two decades. Imagine if Texas was the main source of “Radical Islamic Terrorism”, and there was a program to reducate Texas Islams into good Christians. Take a good hard look at your MAGA neighbors and think, what percentage of Americans would be full throatedly in support of the program? What percentage would just be silent about it? Then add that criticism of the program would be considered treason, and then see how much of the population objects.
I know a lot of very “moral” people (good to their families, employees, give to the poor, etc), western educated Chinese professionals, who support the uigher program entirety. I don’t think fundamentally they are much different than we are, they are products of their environment.
This is the same America that put the Japanese in internment camps half a lifetime ago. We might think we’re so much better now, but are we? Imagine Trump crushed covid with the efficacy that the Chinese government did. Is it hard to imagine that he would now be ahead in the polls by 10, 20%? He wins and puts in place Islamic reduction camps and prosecutes all criticism as sedition.
Unlikely? Remember we just, last week(!), confirmed a Supreme Court Justice that supports gay conversion re-education therapy. She was on the board of a school that banned all gay students from admission, and even the straight kids of gay parents! This is who we have picked as the successor to RBG.
Thanks for taking the time to really engage with the post. This is the strongest argument against this, that’d they would just shut it off and folks really wouldn’t care. They did blackout some games, upload feeds later after they could make sure materials were scrubbed of #freehongkong, etc. A think a longer-term, more comprehensive ban would make people more upset.
This idea is not even really a solution, it’s more like a hail mary pass when you’re down 8 with 3 minutes left. Will it work? Probably not, but it sure is higher than running the ball (essentially our collective response at the moment).
I agree that there is surprising support for current internment from otherwise normal, nice people. I think putting a face on children separated from their mothers make help this. I also agree that we are not, in a broad sense significantly more moral people (look what we did at Gitmo etc). I do, however, have a sense that bad things happen in America, but generally (at least compared to other places), once they get enough media exposure we correct them. Perhaps this is just a naive view of mine, but it’s strongly held.
Also, I should mention, ideas that you think might have a higher chance of working are encouraged! This is a problem I think about a lot.
Thanks for your response! I’ve worked in and around China for a long time and also read extensively on China (highly recommend “The Party” by Richard McGregor). So while I am not an expert by any means, I have at least a base of knowledge and experience more than the average joe.
Honestly, the NBA doesn’t have the moral compass to take this sort of action, nor does really any large US corporation. Even Google only pulled out of China when it didn’t matter. They were so behind in search and maps in Baidu, so when they left “due to censorship”, it didn’t affect their bottom line at all.
Also, people just don’t care as much about sports in China as in the US. Yeah, there are 600 million “fans”, but we are using that word in the broadest sense. The most hardcore of these will find ways to watch games if they are banned, the rest will just shrug it off. Even Apple, perhaps the most loved western brand in China, could be banned tomorrow and 90% of Apple users would just shrug and switch to a Huawei phone.
Perhaps I’m jaded, but I am not optimistic that anything can or will be done at this point, and certainly not from the private sector. In the public sector… western governments have failed so miserably at COVID that controlling it and recovering from the economic impacts are all they will care about in the next five to ten years. The eastern democracies that have handled COVID well are too economically tethered to China. They might make some noises, but won’t take any real action.
I’m definitely afraid that this is the most likely outcome. It’s a classic collective action problem. It’s interesting that the NBA will take action on social issues, but you could look at those and say they’ll only do it if it helps them financially, not if it will actually affect the bottom line. It would take concerted efforts from players (such as Enes Kanter) to get them to do anything. You would only have to convince 400 people in the league to make something like this happen-much smaller than trying to move the state dept. etc.
You may be correct, that at the end of the day folks just don’t care about sports very much. If you think there is a core fanbase of around 100 million people rabid fans in China, I believe that may be enough to move the needle. Again, this is not a high percentage play, but I think it’s an interesting option, that’s higher than the other options I see on the board to try to prevent this really bad thing from happening.
I think 100m is overstating the hardcore fan base by at least a factor of 10. You can do some fermi analysis to come up with a better ballpark number. Start with the middle class, further segment by young males, further segment by interest in NBA, then multiply by a hardcore fan factor ratio, which you could estimate by taking the ratio in the USA and applying a discount rate.
Ahh-great idea!