I guess we disagree on the plain face reading of this. If I punched you in the face for some reason, and then said to you - “hey, these actions hurt your face, which is regrettable,” would you think I was apologizing to you? Or would you think I was issuing a vague “I’m sorry you got your feelings hurt” non-apology?
Well, first they said: “While Daryl has made it clear that his tweet does not represent the Rockets or the NBA, the values of the league support individuals’ educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them.”
This is pretty unambiguously saying that “whether we agree with him or not, we will not be punishing Daryl for exercising his right to express his opinion, which we support even in cases where we do not agree.”
But then the last sentence was this: “We have great respect for the history and culture of China and hope that sports and the NBA can be used as a unifying force to bridge cultural divides and bring people together.”
I think in context this reads as pacifying words that don’t really mean anything. We have great respect for the history and culture of China is a meaningless truism. And the last clause - “[we] hope that sports and the NBA can be used as a unifying force to bring people together” is just a repackaged ancient cliche about sports.
So in total, I read the statement as:
Hey, sorry you got your feelings hurt. The NBA is a collective entity representing thousands of opinions about Hong Kong, so we can’t say we agree or disagree with Daryl, but we stand behind his right to say what he said. You guys are swell! And old! And sports are about togetherness and transcending our differences! So keep buying our T-shirts!
Maybe not the scorched-earth condemnation of Chinese policies that we might prefer, but not an apology.
On the one hand, I agree. On the other, it’s a handwave…‘The CCP is gonna do what authoritarian bully governments do.’ is a complete cop out, and it’s what I generally hear. The CCP gets a pass because, you know, authoritarian dictatorships are gonna do what they are gonna do, so let’s attack the NBA for caving in! Let’s leave aside that COUNTRIES are caving in as well to their pressure, and focus on the fact that the NBA didn’t stand up to them as they should! Or Apple didn’t. Or Google didn’t.
There are US politicians on both sides who have caved into the CCP…and some that are, or seem to be at least partially in the CCP’s pocket. And we are far from the worst affected. You don’t hear a lot about it, but Australia and New Zealand have both come in for a lot of this…native politicians who seem to have a CCP oriented agenda.
I agree though, that we, as consumers of things like the NBA (ok, I’m not, but I’m sure there are dopers that watch professional basketball or whatever) should DEFINITELY vote with our pocketbooks when they do stuff like this. But we should also be aware that this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg…more like the first few molecules of the iceberg.
But punching me in the face is inherently wrong, so I think the context is different. “Joe went to get a burger, offending PETA, which is regrettable” is more analogous. And in such a statement, validating PETA’s hurt feelings is a rebuke to Joe.
But I agree that the word “apology” doesn’t seem really apt in this situation. Someone has to have a slight amount of guts and pride to admit error. The NBA seems unburdened by such a modest amount of courage.
I’m not going to debate your interpretation word-by-word – but thank you for explaining your perspective more.
CCTV (the state run television channel) has issued the following statement about the latest attempts by the NBA to walk the thin line between supporting freedom and democracy and making that almighty dollar:
They released a statement saying:
"We have noticed that Adam Silver, the Commissioner of the NBA, who is participating in an event in Japan, has responded to Houston Rockets general manager Morey’s post of inappropriate Hong Kong-related remarks. We are strongly dissatisfied and we oppose Silver’s claim to support Morey’s right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech.
To this end, CCTV Sports Channel of the Central Radio and Television Administration has decided to immediately suspend the current broadcast arrangements of the NBA pre-season (China Games) and immediately investigate all cooperation and exchanges involving the NBA."
The NBA appears to have meetings set with officials from China on Wednesday. Should be an interesting meeting.
They see them (rightfully, from their perspective) as very real threats. The thing is, they do this all the time to nation states, and often they force compliance in similar ways…with hold access or money or influence or whatever. Hell, they were forcing countries to pressure their national airlines to make sure that on their drop down menus for destinations in Asia, they had Taiwan listed as a province of China.
They do this sort of shit all the time. It just generally goes under the radar and unnoticed.
Why do we give two fucks about whether Chinese television shows NBA? If they get their panties in a twist every time someone in the US says something they don’t like, tough titties.
I totally agree, but then it’s not skin of my nose if anyone watches the NBA. The NBA probably cares because they are making inroads into the China market, as there are a lot of new NBA fans due to Chinese nationals who play in the NBA and just because, it seems (for reasons that frankly escape me) that Chinese just like basketball (I honestly don’t know why anyone likes to watch any sports, but that’s just me).
You could say the same thing about Hollywood…if the Chinese get all butt hurt because of something in your movie, well, though shit…they can just steal it as they have been doing. The issue, of course, is money, but that’s just the leverage tool that the CCP uses to keep companies and whole countries in line with their will.
Hamfisted introduction of “culture war” phasing aside, the authoritative totalitarian superpower that we call China happily bullies international political and corporate entities to further their own goals; they do much worse to their own citizens if they deem them large enough threats.
I don’t mean that to give them a pass. I mean: I don’t know how to effectively do anything about the CCP. But I do know how to hold American institutions accountable (to some extent).
This feels a little bit like whatabout-ism. Like I can’t legitimately criticize the NBA because I didn’t criticize others. I’m not saying that the NBA alone deserves our scorn. All the institutions that fail to stand up to China deserve complaint, the NBA included.
To some extent, it’s that the NBA’s decision was so immediate and attention-grabbing. There’s usually very little light shined on corporate deference to China. In this case it was blatant and obvious.
It is with some irony that I note that of all our political institutions that failed to stand up to China for decades, Trump (whom I loathe) is one of few politicians to push back. For, I think, mostly the wrong reasons, but there it is.
You can criticize the NBA all you like. But, are you criticizing all of the countries that are doing similar things for similar reasons? What about the politicians who are doing similar things for similar reasons? I DO blame the NBA, and the others for what they do, but I realize that if a nation state is having trouble standing up to the CCP when they are bringing pressure to bear, how is a company going to be able to do it?
As a for instance, are you aware that just about every country has now backed off of support for Taiwan? 10 years ago, there were still a bunch of countries that acknowledged Taiwan as separate from China (i.e. not a break away Chinese province). Today, that has narrowed a lot, due completely to CCP pressure. The US is one of the few holdouts, and that’s because our Taiwan policy has always been wonky (for our own reasons). Now, if countries can’t just shrug off the CCPs forcing them to change their tune, why should or could the NBA?
The easy answer, and one I agree with, is they should tell the CCP to go fuck themselves and just take the hit on projected or even realized revenue. It’s more important to have integrity than buckets of cash, especially in some cases when it’s not even real cash but the possibility of cash in the form of new or expanding markets. But that’s easy for me to say…I’m not the CEO or beholden to stakeholders or board members or whatever, so it’s easy for me to tell them to take a flying fuck and to despise companies who sell out to the CCP. But then I look at the pressure that the CCP brings to bear on nation states, and it gives some perspective. It doesn’t excuse companies who fold to the pressure…just puts it into a context to look at the bigger picture.
China tries to straight up buy Australian politicians all the time - also they’re in the best possible position to royally screw us since they buy three-quarters of our exports and are totally not above using this fact to put pressure on us any time they like. They’re also keeping tabs on the large Chinese student contingent to keep them politically in line.
This all undoubtedly has an effect but it didn’t stop the government locking out Huawei from the 5G network recently, so it’s doing them less good than they’d like. And the fact that the cashed-up politician-buyers are largely coming from outside the country is at least concentrating people’s minds on the fact that too much money in politics is a big problem and ought to have severe limits on it.
(The donation amounts in my first link are, by the way, pretty massive by Australian standards where huge donations are generally measured in the low hundreds of thousands)
Here is an article about a book about Thomas Watson and IBM. Watson did a lot more than self-censorship. He sold stuff to the Germans that let them track Jews better.
I don’t recall much selling to the Soviet Union. And plenty of nasty talk.
Well films (and games) illustrate how this can be more pernicious than just this latest news story would imply.
Because with movies nowadays China doesn’t need to say “This offends us”.
Filmmakers just know that movies that offend china with political messages, or just things that they don’t consider suitable (like featuring Tibetans or certain depictions of ghosts) won’t get released there, which for many movies can mean halving their box office.
So they self-censor.
(Also they may throw in a token scene set in China with some Chinese person being brave that often bears no relationship to the rest of the film)
Absolutely they do. And you are totally right, it’s VERY pernicious, and the news you hear doesn’t really get into how serious this really is.
The token Chinese thing is fine, usually, but whole movie plots have been changed, sometimes by passing the script to the CCP or to one of the ‘independent’ movie distributors in China first so they can make changes that will, um, ‘help’ the move become one of the 21(IIRC) foreign movies officially allowed to be released in China (and therefore, actually get some box office money from, as opposed to the rest which are usually illegally sold and viewed).
This is not an issue of pandering to the Chinese to sell them some stuff. This is about an GM voicing support for the people of Hong Kong who want freedom and the NBA not supporting him and kowtowing to China. This is not an attempt by China to simply limit free speech there, it’s an attempt by them to limit free speech here, and the NBA stepped in it by not immediately supporting their GM and his right to free speech instead of apologizing to China. This is a matter of principle more important than the worship of money.