tl;dr: Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong,” which obviously upset China, causing them to essentially blacklist the Rockets from Chinese streaming (for now). The rockets and many other teams are currently in Asia for pre-season games. The NBA has defended players/staff’s right to say what he wants, but has obviously tired to avoid criticisms of China.
Curious to see how these types of relationships develop moving forwards. China is a huge market and can bring in a ton of money going forward, but at what cost?
Personally, I think the secret sauce of the NBA is that the organization has great community engagement. With that, the engagement isn’t always going to be what’s ‘right’ for the NBA and things like this are naturally going to come up. Silencing people is only going to make the NBA worse in the long-run.
This is tricky and I’ve recently been putting a lot of thought into this topic. I could care less about the NBA or any single organization specifically. I frequently get irritated at the US for meddling internationally where they don’t belong and not accepting that the world has no obligation to conform to our view of morality. I still firmly believe this is not the US’s place to interfere, but I also believe we have no obligation to be silent and we’ve been accommodating the governments hyper sensitivity too long for access. I think the economic relationship with China needs to be reexamined and even if its the serendipitous work of a village idiot, Trump’s move in this direction is well timed and something I feel strongly about.
This case highlights the broader conflict on how China views its interactions with the world and business in general. China is also unmistakeably growing bolder and more assertive in its views and this is not coincidentally following Xi’s rise and the “corruption” crackdown that consolidated his power. You don’t have to look far to find case after case of publicly acknowledged instances where someone protested against the Chinese government and disappeared only to resurface in a forcibly committed mental institution, political prisoners used as unwilling organ donors, the Uyghurs etc. Hong Kong is also not a coincidental issue of timing. These authoritarian abuses are piling up as the CN economy is slowing and the government is also becoming more assertive internationally. When I landscaped I always had a rule of thumb that you see 1 bee, no big deal, 2 bees, you should pay attention and 3 something was up. This is how I feel about these issues coming out of CN.
I just think that we may be entering a very interesting and tumultuous period of Asia focused history and its time to reexamine the terms of our economic ties at the least.
This should be very alarming to anyone given the scope of influence CN is weilding and the consolidated authoritarian dynamic governing 1.4B people. HK is a tip of the iceberg.
LONDON — The organs of members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prison camps are being forcefully harvested — sometimes when patients are still alive, an international tribunal sitting in London has concluded.
Some of the more than 1.5 million detainees in Chinese prison camps are being killed for their organs to serve a booming transplant trade that is worth some $1 billion a year, concluded the China Tribunal, an independent body tasked with investigating organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in the authoritarianstate.
The tribunal added that witnesses, experts and investigators had told of how Falun Gong practitioners continued to be killed in order for their organs to be extracted. It added that forced organ harvesting was also being performed while victims are still alive, killing the person in the process.
The statement recalled how one witness, Dr. Enver Tohti, told of how as a surgeon in China he had been required to perform organ extractions. Referring to one instance in which he extracted an organ from a living patient, he said: “What I recall is with my scalpel, I tried to cut into his skin, there was blood to be seen. That indicates that the heart was still beating … At the same time, he was trying to resist my insertion, but he was too weak.”
“It is no longer a question of whether organ harvesting in China is happening, that dialogue is well and truly over. We need an urgent response to save these people’s lives,” Susie Hughes, executive director and co-founder of the coalition, said.
I think the argument is that they’re executing and harvesting these organs to fulfill organ needs. And that a lot of these groups are political and religious prisoners. This is some pre-WWII Nazi Germany type stuff and I mean that in the most literal non-hyperbolic sense possible.
Not in pre-WW2, that started after. This is the period where people sat there and did nothing.
It’s also not really a better use when you’re rounding up people for following random religions or being political opponents. Nerdy, I like to joke, I’m just not sure ongoing genocide fits the bill.
the us didnt go to war with germany because of the holocaust. us had no choice. germany declared war becasue the us declared war on japan. to be honest germany didnt have to. hitler did it for shits and giggles. he definitely fooked up.
I didn’t advocate a war or imply the holocaust was the reason for the war (or compare this to the holocaust). So I have no idea what this was aiming to accomplish. I’m not sure you’re following what I’m saying.
Not sure what you’re getting at here. Better use of what? Transplanting organs from criminals (definition dependent upon the state) into productive civilians?
Easier to govern but killing people based on different cultures is just plain wrong. Can’t justify these actions that China is taking.
Nerdy, you can distance yourself economically and geopolitically from even world powers in these situations and impose separation through more trade restrictions without imposing your beliefs on anyone. In those scenarios they are free to function as they are and other countries are free to distance themselves from it. I think it is for the best to begin this. Not everything ends in a world war, but historically these scenarios all end poorly. It was exactly this type of thinking during the rise of Nazi Germany with its serious abuses that helped fuel it to the point it eventually reached. I think the US would be smart to begin stepping back a bit, even if just to reduce its exposure to a potential geopolitical flare up.
There are plenty of other places to build iphones.
I mean let’s be real. It’s probably true. China is an authoritarian state. When you only have 1 party with no checks and balances. Shitty things happen!
I generally agree with BS but I believe a lot of stuff that scares us about China is because it is foreign and novel. For example, we find their social credit score scary. But our credit score is fine. And our scores started off as a low tech version of the Chinese ones. To continue the example, I think there is a difference between the two scores and they are not equal. But I do think part of the reaction is not due to this difference, but merely because it is different and we aren’t used to it like we are our practices.
When I’m in China and have to use facial recognition to get toilet paper, it certainly feels bad. But how bad is it really? I think this is a situation where its really hard to separate one from one’s cultural bias. Doesn’t mean I can’t criticize China, but it does mean I maintain a high level of skeptism of my beliefs.
So normally I am in that camp which is why I think we agree. On the organ harvesting, I think its worth taking 20 minutes sometime you’ve got some downtime and reading the wikipedia article on it including the section on evidence. The process of digging into this issue was one of those things (for me personally) where it was highly impactful and legitimately changed some of my views. Not across the board, I still generally agree with you, but in some areas I now have reservations.