6 ms·

NBA Events in China Disrupted over Hong Kong Tweet

183 points by justinzollars 7y ago

jackschultz 7y ago
Posted and talked about yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194008 Don't know how people feel about these things being multi-posted, but I kind of like seeing a different thread where more people can comment considering top comments in a thread can be random, and also people's opinions can change as quickly as a day.
- supercanuck 7y ago
  Agree. Some people don't refresh Hacker News as religiously as others.
- luckylion 7y ago
  Yeah, this and the other 20 articles should be auto-posted every hour, or stickied to the front page. /s
- drenvuk 7y ago
  Eh, maybe I"m reading too much but having 4 or 5 articles on the front page be dedicated to China news is too much for me.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    It's clearly a major topic of conversation and discussion, though.
    - egeozcan 7y ago
      Yes and it should be too. On the other hand if you seek content that you can only see in HN and the small amount of similar sites, and when these also get overrun with news that you can already follow on mainstream, it feels like there are no options left. Well maybe except lobste.rs.
      - trevyn 7y ago
        I find the HN “hide” option to work well for uninteresting stories.
  - corodra 7y ago
    American companies are implementing Chinese censorship rules into American society because the companies are afraid of offending the communist party. China has wide scale prison camps for ethnic minorities. Reports of organ harvesting being conducted on these people. Adds up since china has no wait time for transplants. Along with video of mass maltreatment of these people. Then there's the clashes in Hong Kong. That's just the top 3 problems right now. This has an international effect, whether you shrug it off or not.
    - drenvuk 7y ago
      Right. Judging from the responses I'm getting it seems like I'm the outlier. I'll take a break.
humble_engineer 7y ago
The reason you haven't heard a single, solitary actor or actress speak up about Hong Kong is because China's money is pouring into Hollywood. They invest billions into making movies. This is also the same reason you've never seen Brad Pitt wearing a Free Tibet shirt in +10 years. He was only wearing that shirt because at the time, Bill Clinton had a spat with China. Actors and actresses are as fickle as the wind. But Kudos to these NBA players speaking out.
ivankolev 7y ago
A tidbit from the article: > In an indication of how the basketball dispute may be galvanizing some sectors of Chinese society, police in the northeastern province of Jilin said they had arrested on Sunday a 25-year-old man accused of making online “remarks that insult the national flag.” The man was identified by police only by his family name Wang and his online screen name on the messaging service Weibo. That account showed a photo of a man wearing a Houston Rockets jersey with a cover over his eye—imagery adopted by demonstrators in Hong Kong—and holding a lighter below an upside down Chinese flag. “I live and die with the basketball team,” the posting said.
- magashna 7y ago
  Any American basketball fan is fair-weather compared to this guy. Although I wonder if it's the best hill to, possibly literally, die on.
  - russdpale 7y ago
    fun fact, Michael Jordan is the only human to have a statue in china taller than Mao.
    - joelx 7y ago
      We should boycott the NBA and find ways to help bring freedom to China.
bigpumpkin 7y ago
Two funny things about this: 1. Both Americans and China are furious at the NBA, both are threatening to boycott it. 2. Tencent just signed a $1.5 Billion streaming deal with the NBA. If the Chinese ban the NBA, then the first casualty (besides the NBA) is their own company.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  On 2, banning US media/sports which Chinese can stream for free might just be contextualized further trade retaliation. Though I think banning the NBA has actual potential for domestic backlash compared to HK.
  - ThinkBackTo 7y ago
    You underestimate how brainwashed Chinese people are
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bipolar_lisper 7y ago
So some millionaires can't play a game, and this is the most upvoted thing on HackerNews about what's going on between the USA and China? Really?
- jasd 7y ago
  If that's what it takes to bring attention to all the issues, I'll take it!
- donarb 7y ago
  Cultural ambassadors such as sports figures or artists can help to defuse political animus between countries.
seph-reed 7y ago
If anyone knows the full list of who to boycott, I've opened an issue on the Hong Kong support github: https://github.com/hongkonggong/beyond-lennon-walls/issues/24 https://github.com/hongkonggong/beyond-lennon-walls/issues/2...
clairity 7y ago
the compare and contrast of this with the nfl and colin kaepernick is interesting. here, a general manager of a team (not a player) showed support for free speech (the protests) and democratic values over tyranny, and the league rallied (measured) support for him. many americans then criticized the nba for not going far enough, because greed. with the nfl, a player protests minority persecution by the police (an expression of governmental power). the league bans the respectfully protesting player (because greed) and fans cheer the oppression in the name of patriotism. the subtext is not so flattering for us americans.
- vnchr 7y ago
  Interesting interpretation of events. Most accounts of the NBA controversy that I've heard suggest the apology to China made by the Houston Rockets's James Harden[1] in response is what has drawn criticism. And the GM has been pressured into making an apology [2]. That was after the Houston Rockets immediately distanced themselves from the statement [3]. The criticism I've heard has been of the subservient apologies, because freedom. Our National Basketball Association has demonstrated a split loyalty. Also, Kaepernick was not banned, although perhaps that's an interpretation of his not being rehired after his contract ended. Statistically, he was the worst or second worst QB in the NFL. Add to that the PR risk, and the return on investment is negative. In China, if I posted that same critical comment to social media, I'd fear for my life and the lives of my family as a direct action from the government. In the USA, Colin Kaepernick has a lucrative Nike endorsement and, while a controversial figure, lives freely and is often celebrated freely. I'll side with us Americans on this one. [1] https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27787634/james-harden-apologizes-controversy-grows-love-china https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27787634/james-harden-ap... [2] https://www.npr.org/2019/10/07/767805936/houston-rockets-gm-apologizes-for-tweet-supporting-hong-kong-protesters https://www.npr.org/2019/10/07/767805936/houston-rockets-gm-... [3] https://twitter.com/TilmanJFertitta/status/1180330287957495809 https://twitter.com/TilmanJFertitta/status/11803302879574958... [4] "Kaepernick had a defense-adjusted yards above replacement — Football Outsiders’ ultimate value quotient — of minus-182, 35th in the NFL. By all metrics, he was one of the worst quarterbacks in the league." https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/colin-kaepernick-49ers-start-chip-kelly-nfl-buffalo-stats-career-highlights-fantasy-101116 https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/colin-kaepernick-49ers-s...
hos234 7y ago
All this is reminding me of the fall of the Iron Curtain for some reason. That too started in unexpected ways and was over quicker then anyone imagined. "They have 200000 soviet soldiers watching...silos full of nuclear missiles and he wants to topple them with leaflets" - https://youtu.be/F_kVbLubBxM https://youtu.be/F_kVbLubBxM
lancesells 7y ago
Crazy how all this started from a service (Twitter) that is banned in China. Not only censoring apps that do business there but outrage over a comment on an app the Chinese people aren't even supposed to see.
- taobility 7y ago
  There are millions of Chinese living at USA right now
  - hkmaxpro 7y ago
    Most aren't Chinese nationals any more. They either grew up learning US values, or were natralized with the oath “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. [0] In any case, they enjoy the freedom to access different opinions in the US, and should respect those opinions. [0] https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/naturalization-test/naturalization-oath-allegiance-united-states-america https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/naturalization-test/nat...
pitt1980 7y ago
The Chinese government's reaction to this seems extraordinarily strong to me. The NBA is hugely popular there, don't they risk annoying huge chunks of their own population by taking it off the air? Morey is not even an especially notable NBA figure, Twitter doesn't even work in China, it would have been easy to block news of this in China. It seems like the reaction would cause a Streisand effect there. Isn't a backlash among the US population over this plainly foreseeable? That doesn't seem like its in their interests. Working off the assumption that the Chinese government is rational, why is its reaction here so strong? What other things are about to happen, that make this reaction make sense?
- Donald 7y ago
  > The NBA is hugely popular there, don't they risk annoying huge chunks of their own population by taking it off the air? Yes, by design. The Chinese government is signalling that the NBA is anti-China, just like they did with the iPhone (sales are down over 20% as a result of the government's marketing campaign and market pressure from Huawei.) Patriotic Chinese will get the message and stop watching the NBA.
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
  It's more like the reverse. Tencent/CCTV is responding so that they don't get boycotted. The government probably desperately wants this to go away.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  Some possibilities, banning NBA could be low cost oblique trade war retaliation. Chinese going to stream for free anyways. Ramping up Chinese nationalism in response to HK forced the governments hand. This is why CPC tries to contain nationalism normally, it's hard to contain and limits maneuverability. Also CPC foreign propaganda organ is... very inept. NBA is very popular there might actually be backlash. Punishing western companies for questioning Chinese sovereignty issues as been consistently happening for years. The Chinese response has been completely consistent with past behaviors. They've always been extremely heavy handed on this issue. It's only an issue in the west due to Sino-US tensions being escalated into culture clash / war territory. Edit, to add on culture, in China, central government influence over companies is perceived as a sign of strength and not fragility. Which leads to naive hot takes here like the government is scared when the opposite is true. Yes, NBA has a huge market but not larger than Chinese sovereignty. Conceding on this point is an existential weakness.
tomohawk 7y ago
NBA needs to decide whether they are an organ of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) or whether they have some self respect. They're in an important position to protect the sport, but if they go chasing after money from the CCP what will they be then? And what do they think will happen to the protesters in Hong Kong? Probably the same thing that has happened to others. https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ Why identify with the CCP by doing what they say?
ivankolev 7y ago
This keeps getting escalated it seems, fans were ejected in Philly, for waving signs in support of HK: https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/10/philadelphia-76ers-sixers-fans-hong-kong-signs-ejected-preseason-china https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/10/philadelphia-76ers-sixers-f...
sunshine2000 7y ago
In the USA, racism is biggest issue. In China, sovereignty is the biggest issue. Any companies who are doing business with China, they must have this in their minds.
NTDF9 7y ago
I think this is all posturing. They are using Trump's own tactic against him. Keep increasing stakes with more losses to be had before the next trade meeting

183 points by justinzollars 7y ago

Posted and talked about yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194008 Don't know how people feel about these things being multi-posted, but I kind of like seeing a different thread where more people can comment considering top comments in a thread can be random, and also people's opinions can change as quickly as a day.

supercanuck 7y ago
Agree. Some people don't refresh Hacker News as religiously as others.
luckylion 7y ago
Yeah, this and the other 20 articles should be auto-posted every hour, or stickied to the front page. /s
drenvuk 7y ago
Eh, maybe I"m reading too much but having 4 or 5 articles on the front page be dedicated to China news is too much for me.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  It's clearly a major topic of conversation and discussion, though.
  - egeozcan 7y ago
    Yes and it should be too. On the other hand if you seek content that you can only see in HN and the small amount of similar sites, and when these also get overrun with news that you can already follow on mainstream, it feels like there are no options left. Well maybe except lobste.rs.
    - trevyn 7y ago
      I find the HN “hide” option to work well for uninteresting stories.
- corodra 7y ago
  American companies are implementing Chinese censorship rules into American society because the companies are afraid of offending the communist party. China has wide scale prison camps for ethnic minorities. Reports of organ harvesting being conducted on these people. Adds up since china has no wait time for transplants. Along with video of mass maltreatment of these people. Then there's the clashes in Hong Kong. That's just the top 3 problems right now. This has an international effect, whether you shrug it off or not.
  - drenvuk 7y ago
    Right. Judging from the responses I'm getting it seems like I'm the outlier. I'll take a break.

humble_engineer 7y ago

The reason you haven't heard a single, solitary actor or actress speak up about Hong Kong is because China's money is pouring into Hollywood. They invest billions into making movies. This is also the same reason you've never seen Brad Pitt wearing a Free Tibet shirt in +10 years. He was only wearing that shirt because at the time, Bill Clinton had a spat with China. Actors and actresses are as fickle as the wind. But Kudos to these NBA players speaking out.

ivankolev 7y ago

A tidbit from the article: > In an indication of how the basketball dispute may be galvanizing some sectors of Chinese society, police in the northeastern province of Jilin said they had arrested on Sunday a 25-year-old man accused of making online “remarks that insult the national flag.” The man was identified by police only by his family name Wang and his online screen name on the messaging service Weibo. That account showed a photo of a man wearing a Houston Rockets jersey with a cover over his eye—imagery adopted by demonstrators in Hong Kong—and holding a lighter below an upside down Chinese flag. “I live and die with the basketball team,” the posting said.

magashna 7y ago
Any American basketball fan is fair-weather compared to this guy. Although I wonder if it's the best hill to, possibly literally, die on.
- russdpale 7y ago
  fun fact, Michael Jordan is the only human to have a statue in china taller than Mao.
  - joelx 7y ago
    We should boycott the NBA and find ways to help bring freedom to China.

bigpumpkin 7y ago

Two funny things about this: 1. Both Americans and China are furious at the NBA, both are threatening to boycott it. 2. Tencent just signed a $1.5 Billion streaming deal with the NBA. If the Chinese ban the NBA, then the first casualty (besides the NBA) is their own company.

dirtyid 7y ago
On 2, banning US media/sports which Chinese can stream for free might just be contextualized further trade retaliation. Though I think banning the NBA has actual potential for domestic backlash compared to HK.
- ThinkBackTo 7y ago
  You underestimate how brainwashed Chinese people are

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bipolar_lisper 7y ago

So some millionaires can't play a game, and this is the most upvoted thing on HackerNews about what's going on between the USA and China? Really?

jasd 7y ago
If that's what it takes to bring attention to all the issues, I'll take it!
donarb 7y ago
Cultural ambassadors such as sports figures or artists can help to defuse political animus between countries.

seph-reed 7y ago

If anyone knows the full list of who to boycott, I've opened an issue on the Hong Kong support github: https://github.com/hongkonggong/beyond-lennon-walls/issues/24 https://github.com/hongkonggong/beyond-lennon-walls/issues/2...

clairity 7y ago

the compare and contrast of this with the nfl and colin kaepernick is interesting. here, a general manager of a team (not a player) showed support for free speech (the protests) and democratic values over tyranny, and the league rallied (measured) support for him. many americans then criticized the nba for not going far enough, because greed. with the nfl, a player protests minority persecution by the police (an expression of governmental power). the league bans the respectfully protesting player (because greed) and fans cheer the oppression in the name of patriotism. the subtext is not so flattering for us americans.

vnchr 7y ago
Interesting interpretation of events. Most accounts of the NBA controversy that I've heard suggest the apology to China made by the Houston Rockets's James Harden[1] in response is what has drawn criticism. And the GM has been pressured into making an apology [2]. That was after the Houston Rockets immediately distanced themselves from the statement [3]. The criticism I've heard has been of the subservient apologies, because freedom. Our National Basketball Association has demonstrated a split loyalty. Also, Kaepernick was not banned, although perhaps that's an interpretation of his not being rehired after his contract ended. Statistically, he was the worst or second worst QB in the NFL. Add to that the PR risk, and the return on investment is negative. In China, if I posted that same critical comment to social media, I'd fear for my life and the lives of my family as a direct action from the government. In the USA, Colin Kaepernick has a lucrative Nike endorsement and, while a controversial figure, lives freely and is often celebrated freely. I'll side with us Americans on this one. [1] https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27787634/james-harden-apologizes-controversy-grows-love-china https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27787634/james-harden-ap... [2] https://www.npr.org/2019/10/07/767805936/houston-rockets-gm-apologizes-for-tweet-supporting-hong-kong-protesters https://www.npr.org/2019/10/07/767805936/houston-rockets-gm-... [3] https://twitter.com/TilmanJFertitta/status/1180330287957495809 https://twitter.com/TilmanJFertitta/status/11803302879574958... [4] "Kaepernick had a defense-adjusted yards above replacement — Football Outsiders’ ultimate value quotient — of minus-182, 35th in the NFL. By all metrics, he was one of the worst quarterbacks in the league." https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/colin-kaepernick-49ers-start-chip-kelly-nfl-buffalo-stats-career-highlights-fantasy-101116 https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/colin-kaepernick-49ers-s...

hos234 7y ago

All this is reminding me of the fall of the Iron Curtain for some reason. That too started in unexpected ways and was over quicker then anyone imagined. "They have 200000 soviet soldiers watching...silos full of nuclear missiles and he wants to topple them with leaflets" - https://youtu.be/F_kVbLubBxM https://youtu.be/F_kVbLubBxM

lancesells 7y ago

Crazy how all this started from a service (Twitter) that is banned in China. Not only censoring apps that do business there but outrage over a comment on an app the Chinese people aren't even supposed to see.

taobility 7y ago
There are millions of Chinese living at USA right now
- hkmaxpro 7y ago
  Most aren't Chinese nationals any more. They either grew up learning US values, or were natralized with the oath “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. [0] In any case, they enjoy the freedom to access different opinions in the US, and should respect those opinions. [0] https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/naturalization-test/naturalization-oath-allegiance-united-states-america https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/naturalization-test/nat...

pitt1980 7y ago

The Chinese government's reaction to this seems extraordinarily strong to me. The NBA is hugely popular there, don't they risk annoying huge chunks of their own population by taking it off the air? Morey is not even an especially notable NBA figure, Twitter doesn't even work in China, it would have been easy to block news of this in China. It seems like the reaction would cause a Streisand effect there. Isn't a backlash among the US population over this plainly foreseeable? That doesn't seem like its in their interests. Working off the assumption that the Chinese government is rational, why is its reaction here so strong? What other things are about to happen, that make this reaction make sense?

Donald 7y ago
> The NBA is hugely popular there, don't they risk annoying huge chunks of their own population by taking it off the air? Yes, by design. The Chinese government is signalling that the NBA is anti-China, just like they did with the iPhone (sales are down over 20% as a result of the government's marketing campaign and market pressure from Huawei.) Patriotic Chinese will get the message and stop watching the NBA.
KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
It's more like the reverse. Tencent/CCTV is responding so that they don't get boycotted. The government probably desperately wants this to go away.
dirtyid 7y ago
Some possibilities, banning NBA could be low cost oblique trade war retaliation. Chinese going to stream for free anyways. Ramping up Chinese nationalism in response to HK forced the governments hand. This is why CPC tries to contain nationalism normally, it's hard to contain and limits maneuverability. Also CPC foreign propaganda organ is... very inept. NBA is very popular there might actually be backlash. Punishing western companies for questioning Chinese sovereignty issues as been consistently happening for years. The Chinese response has been completely consistent with past behaviors. They've always been extremely heavy handed on this issue. It's only an issue in the west due to Sino-US tensions being escalated into culture clash / war territory. Edit, to add on culture, in China, central government influence over companies is perceived as a sign of strength and not fragility. Which leads to naive hot takes here like the government is scared when the opposite is true. Yes, NBA has a huge market but not larger than Chinese sovereignty. Conceding on this point is an existential weakness.

tomohawk 7y ago

NBA needs to decide whether they are an organ of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) or whether they have some self respect. They're in an important position to protect the sport, but if they go chasing after money from the CCP what will they be then? And what do they think will happen to the protesters in Hong Kong? Probably the same thing that has happened to others. https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ Why identify with the CCP by doing what they say?

ivankolev 7y ago

This keeps getting escalated it seems, fans were ejected in Philly, for waving signs in support of HK: https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/10/philadelphia-76ers-sixers-fans-hong-kong-signs-ejected-preseason-china https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/10/philadelphia-76ers-sixers-f...

sunshine2000 7y ago

In the USA, racism is biggest issue. In China, sovereignty is the biggest issue. Any companies who are doing business with China, they must have this in their minds.

NTDF9 7y ago

I think this is all posturing. They are using Trump's own tactic against him. Keep increasing stakes with more losses to be had before the next trade meeting