> Having these examples in their hands or on their screens likely initiates a mild cognitive dissonance
You’d be surprised, but no, it doesn’t. And from my experience, older people sometimes just kind of don’t like America, in the same way older Americans don’t like Cuba. Government says their government is bad, don’t really know the people but maybe they’re “brainwashed” unlike us, but the few I’ve met are okay so no reason to really do anything but ignore the country.
Younger people I’ve talked to seem to know a considerable amount about America, and quite a lot of bad. The idea seems to be that companies build things in China because their country can’t and companies like the NBA and so on focus on them because they’re more important now. Which, well, isn’t clearly wrong. If all those American things up and vanished, it’d be a topic for a week and people would stop caring. It’s more normal for products and media to just vanish.
The NBA isn’t an ambassador of anything. It’s a corporate sports team that knows China doesn’t really give a shit about them, but it’s a good chance to get money from what’s likely to be the largest economy in about a decade. That’s all any of these companies are doing, and their road of good intentions is just pumping money into China’s goal of being number 1.
I think it’s entirely fine for the NBA to decide that they want to decide they want to be friendly towards the Chinese market. I also think it’s fine for America to drop the NBA for being the weak, hypocritically “woke” corporation that it is. Either drop politics altogether and be a regular soulless corporation, or actually stand up for what’s right but not only in specific, comfy locations and with safe political statements.