-- Anonymous protester in Hong Kong (on or around October 13, 2019)
Protests in Hong Kong erupted in May when Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam introduced a bill to allow mainland China to extradite criminal suspects from Hong Kong for trial. Hong Kongers immediately took to the streets to protest this action and were able to get the bill removed from consideration (for now) back in June. The protests continued because...well, because protesters gottta protest.
Last week, Houston Rockets general manager, Darryl Morey, re-tweeted a comment supporting the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. Harmless enough, a bland tweet about actions a million miles away that I presume Morey thought would yield a coupla 'likes' and then be forgotten under the weight of a gajillion new tweets. But this was not the case. Authorities in Beijing were offended that the head of China's favorite basketball team (*) would throw shade at the ruling party and give support to what they see as rioters in their (roughly) 7th largest city. Morey deleted the tweet and the commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, immediately issued an apology for the tweet and distanced his league from the actions of one of its team's employees. Chinese broadcasters still announced their intention to remove all NBA games from local television--even the pre-season games being played at the time in China--and all Houston Rockets gear was subsequently removed from sporting goods stores and sites across China (most notably Nike).
Around this time Blizzard Entertainment, one of the world's largest video game developers and publishers, banned one of their players in a Blizzard-sponsored competition after he made pro-Hong Kong comments during a post-victory interview. This has earned Blizzard a great deal of on-line vitriol from the gaming community (**).
Americans look at these kerfuffles and likely think, "Right on! Those people just want freedom and democracy! Why are American companies kowtowing (***) to China?" Lebron James, just last night, criticized Morey's tweet in serpentine language worthy of a political candidate, and has already suffered the wrath of Hong Kong protesters burning his jersey.
Let's take a quick overview of Chinese history. China as we know it more or less goes back to roughly 1050BC when the Zhou dynasty came to power. The Zhou basically peaked at that time and slowly withered away over the next 800 years or so before devolving into the Warring States Period, which was 400 years or so of chaos where smaller states asserted themselves over a singular empire. The Warring States eventually consolidated into the Qin Dynasty, where we get the name 'China' as this was roughly the time when the Chinese and the Romans became aware of each other; they are perhaps most notable for consolidating the written Chinese language that is still (more or less) in use to this day. The Qin collapsed pretty quick and gave way to the Han Dynasty, where we get the ethnic name of the Chinese people (still referred to as the Han Chinese).
Long before all that, there were people along the Yellow River that settled into clumps and had to periodically fight off interlopers from the steppes of central Asia. An 'empire' arose out of the consolidation of villages as they banded together to fight off incoming hordes. Now the hordes came and went and the 'empire' would come and go, as well, reappearing when necessary but going dormant when the threats died down. Over time, though, the necessity of empire won out, as seen in the fact that the empire produced continuity whereas the nomads from the steppe may produce an excellent general from time to time, but otherwise didn't build much or evolve as a consistently dominant force. Empire survived whether strong or not, nomads just drifted and only occasionally made a difference. The aforementioned Zhou Dynasty, for example, springs to life but then meanders for centuries because it doesn't really do anything the people need done. There are periods in the Zhou years, for example, where the emperor is more of a religious figure than a political one because he doesn't actually have much real power, so he had to grip on to symbolic power just to stay relevant.
During the Zhou period lived a man named Confucius. In the West, we think of Confucius as a spiritual force, a great ponderer on life but I'd suggest that's not the case at all. Confucius was a man of stark practicality whose message is really about getting a job and being useful to the polity of the time. He was very temporal, very pragmatic and his message is that the highest form of life is to serve the emperor. Over time--and it took more centuries than it seems like it should have!--emperors took up the message of Confucius and began to form academies where Confucian thought was extolled and tested. This formed the backbone of the political bureaucracy until well into the 20th century (and I would suggest the modern Chinese Communist Party serves much the same function in much the same way with much the same propaganda, albeit now directed to the Party itself rather than the leader).
I could continue to recount dynasties and the inter-dynastic periods of hardship but I'll just sum them up thusly: empire would rise, then fall apart, then come back together, then fall apart, etc., until around 1900 when it completely collapsed and was reborn as something new. At any rate, the point is the long and ancient history of China is the empire rising against an outside force, collapsing from within, then reemerging, over and over again. But some things remain constant: the written language, the Mandate of Heaven (whereby the emperor ruled), the Middle Kingdom (a real thing and a symbolic thing in equal measure), the Confucian Bureaucracy and (generally) the fealty of the individual states to the concept of a central imperial presence. Rather than falling into a pile of competing states (like Europe), they stayed a single unified entity with core values and communication and practices, even in the periods when it all fell apart.
The empire has not overcome every challenge--no, the empire fell apart numerous times in the last 3000 years. But the core concepts and the desire for unification are ancient. And fighting outside forces is when the Chinese are most united.
Back to the history lesson: the Chinese had a period of good growth and relative calm from roughly about 1690 to 1820. They finally defeated their Mongol enemies, they turned Tibet from an enemy to a protectorate, they signed treaties with other countries for the first time (thus, acknowledging that there are lands beyond the Mandate of Heaven), the population boomed, the economy (re: agriculture and manufacturing) was good for an extended period and they had a run of long-lasting emperors that provided continuity relatively rare in their history. Then the Europeans showed up and all that turned to shit.
The French invaded Vietnam, the Japanese invaded Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands, Russia held large chunks Xianjiang, the Portuguese took Macau, the Americans used Most Favored Nation status as a way to really crack open Chinese economy and the Brits wanted more than the rest. The Chinese were bewildered by all of this as they had no interest in anything these foreigners had to offer and no need of their 'diplomacy'. But they put up with it all until the opium epidemic swept their lands in the early 19th century and they felt they had to outlaw it to save their population. This angered the British, who made good money off the opium trade in China (****) and they came at the minuscule Chinese military with the furious wrath of the world's finest navy and broke down the Chinese will. The Chinese reversed their laws, imported massive amounts of deadly opium which kept their population weak but their foreign overlords pleased. And in the settlement the British took Hong Kong.
In later years the Chinese were able to finagle an end date for the British occupation of Hong Kong and in 1997 Hong Kong was formally returned to China. Now by 1997 the Chinese Communist Party (in a rare correct reading of Marx) had embraced entrepreneurial capitalism and saw Hong Kong as a way to be a financial bridge to the markets of the world; and likewise, the people of Hong Kong had grown up with a lifestyle not quite in step with mainland China, so the two groups were agreed that separate identities and practices were mutually beneficial. So Hong Kong has a unique place in Chinese culture: it is part of China, no longer controlled by foreign forces, but its ways are a bit alien to the rest of Chinese culture (which in this context is referred to as the 'Mainland').
And that brings us up to today. And the protests and such. So what is that the protesters in Hong Kong want? They have a separate identity, they have more freedom and wealth already than the rest of their Chinese brethren. They don't want to be submitted to the Chinese judiciary (*****), but that issue has been removed already. Now the claim is they want 'democracy', the iconography of which has taken the form of visualizations of the Statue of Liberty, waving the American flag and readings of the American constitution. But is that really what's going on?
Watch the video above, posted by the South China Morning Post (*****) on October 13. What do you see? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIqx3YIHntc)
Do you see people yearning to breathe free under the yoke of a violent tyrannical gov't? I don't. I see pointless vandalism. I see people taking to the streets with the intent of blocking the way of their fellow non-protesting citizens. I see the people threatening the police, not the other way around. I don't see any desire for democracy, nor do I see a gov't making much effort to stem the tide of the wanton destruction of a tiny portion of its citizenry.
This is what Daryl Morey supports? This is what gamers all over the world support? This is what activists and freedom fighters support? This is what the United States Congress (in three resolutions just passed by the House of Representatives) supports? This is what we are shaming Lebron James and the NBA and Blizzard Entertainment for not supporting?
A thought experiment: what if the NBA said that their marketing this year was going to be all about Donald Trump, MAGA hats for everybody, signage at the arenas extolling the virtues of 'Trumpism', making basketball great again, etc.--how do you think that would go over with the NBA's core fans in the USA? I think it'd be a bad idea and wouldn't work well at all. Oh sure, a handful of media outlets and Twitter accounts that currently have no need for the NBA would cheer but I think it'd be a pretty tiny portion of the population and wouldn't make up for how many fans the NBA would alienate. And I don't think the players would much care for it either.
Well, that's what supporting the Hong Kong protests is like to the mainland Chinese that make up the NBA's fanbase in Asia. The mainlanders look at the Hong Kongers as people already spoiled with too much money, too much foreign influence and too much freedom--and now they're rioting in the streets for more? I assure you, my fellow Americans, these Hong Kong protest are NOT popular with regular Chinese people. Hell, I doubt they're even popular in Hong Kong! Gambits like shutting down the airport and the train stations and looting the shopping malls is of no use to the vast majority of those people. And if these protests look like massive numbers of people, remember: Hong Kong has 7,000,000 people and those pictures show only a tiny percentage of that total population. Distancing themselves from this is the right move for the NBA (and Blizzard, too).
To the rest of the Chinese people, trying to get ahead through education and stock market investment, these protests are a sign of betrayal, weakness and ignorance. The idea that the Chinese people need American political activity is frankly just rude. They like having a central leader that does all the things they don't have to worry about. They don't look at USA's fractious political debates and think, 'Yeah, we need more of that'. No! They don't. And supporting the fringe that has adopted American-style protest is not a winning strategy for American companies, nor is it respectful to the Chinese people themselves.
I'm a big fan of the American founding fathers. I view the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as two of the greatest works in human history. I don't see these protests in Hong Kong as IN ANY WAY representative of a fundamental desire for representation or progress or freedom. Indeed, in the context of Chinese culture, this is just childish behavior with no meaningful intent whatsoever.
My complaint about China is that it is a mono-culture that seeks to produce only the average. In 4,000 years of Chinese there's no Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison, no Bill Gates, no Jimi Hendrix, no Emily Dickinson, no Micheal Jordan or Mark Twain--that's what they need! They need self-expression through intellectual and artistic achievement, not rioting in the streets. They need the NBA and Blizzard (and South Park, too, for that matter) more than they need Occupy Wall Street.
Make no mistake: the reason Lebron James backed away from Morey's tweet is because Lebron wants to make gajillions of dollars and knows that China is the place to do it. Lebron needs China. But even more than that: China needs Lebron. And American do-gooders that believe what they see on TV might well be the death of a beautiful relationship and that would be a god damn shame.
(*) Fun fact: mainland China has more basketball fans than the USA has people.
(**) Also recently the show South Park feuded with the Chinese gov't and has since been banned from Chinese TV. I'll gloss over this because (a) they court controversy as a matter of course and (b) as resilient as South Park has managed to be over the years, they are not the day in/day out obsession that sports and video games are.
(***) The term "kowtow" comes from China and specifically refers to showing obeisance to the Chinese emperor. Kinda refreshing that it is finally getting used in its original definition.
(****) ....As did a man named Warren Delano. Ever heard of him? Give him a Google.
(*****) In my humble opinion China needs two things: an independent media and an independent judiciary. The Communist Party is everything in China and the legislature, the executive, the military and the banks are cool with that because it does flow from a long a tradition of one-party rule. But a judiciary that is beholden to centralized political forces is not much of a judiciary. You may complain as much about the American judiciary and while I'm no fan of the two-party system we've anchored ourselves to, I'd suggest our judges are vastly freer to interpret precedent in this country than...well, anywhere else in the world or in the history of civilization. And the media needs to allow the people to be free, to make their own choices and make up their own minds. Indeed, what good is a gov't that doesn't allow the people to be people?
(******) In case you think the South China Morning Post is a pro-Beijing rag, I assure you it is not. It is a Hong Kong dissident paper that delights in Beijing's failings.
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