Because heaven knows it has been a slow news year, we are apparently adding a new battle to the mix: the National Basketball Association versus China. Or rather, China versus the National Basketball Association; the NBA isn't doing much battling. It's doing zero battling, in fact. The NBA, a business venture, is already begging for mercy.
Last Friday night, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted an image captioned "Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong." He almost immediately deleted it, apparently realizing that publicly standing for anydamnthing was emphatically a bad career move, but it made no difference: The result was swift retaliation by Chinese sponsors and broadcasters, a virtual blackout of the team in China.
This is, of course, bad. The NBA has been pressing hard to popularize the league in China, and a top team functionary weighing in on the nation's treatment of Hong Kong was close to the last thing the Big Money wanted to see. The efforts to clean up the mess have been vigorous, and revolved mostly around denying that the league itself has any particular principles, while praising the general concept of other people having them, if that is what they'd like to do.
As NBA spokesman Mike Bass put it, "The values of the league support individuals’ educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them. 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."
Can't we please get back to the making money part? We like money. China has lots of money. Give us money, please, and let's put this whole tawdry business behind us. (Morey, for his part, emphasized that he had now considered "other perspectives" on the "complicated" issue and did not intend to "cause any offense" to "our Chinese fans and sponsors.")
All right then, so here we are. Lawmakers are blasting the NBA for so quickly being cowed into submission by a China that uses its economic influence to bend every company seeking Chinese profits into political compliance; Chinese NBA fans and partners are genuinely irate that this up-and-coming sporting franchise is blurting out unauthorized opinions about their country; Morey has now been rendered submissive; and we really cannot emphasize enough how all parties just want to get back to the give us money part.
But this is the China trade, and it comes as a shock to exactly nobody. Do business in China, and you are expected to toe the Chinese cultural and political line. (Do business in the United States, as former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick can testify, and you are expected to do the same, so let's not puff our chests up too much on this one.) Companies seeking profit in the Chinese economy are knowingly choosing to scrub a specific set of principles from their books.
Should they make the trade? It seems an irrelevant question to ask. We have long been told that the only purpose of a corporate entity is to make money, and all else is moot. A corporate "person" is, by design, a sociopath; sociopaths are not known for standing with anyone.