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The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

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Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#111

Post by Jommi »

throwaway1997 wrote: post #74
boomboomsubban wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>China really needs to get a grip and understand that with seven billion people in the world, not everyone is going to agree with everything it wants 1.4 billion of those people are Chinese, and they can get outaged over whatever ridiculous shit they want.

It's controlled outrage. The Chinese government controls what they see and therefore where the outrage is directed towards. The average Chinese person either doesn't know about Tinanmen or agrees with it, but are outraged by this.

This is absolutely wrong.

Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#112

Post by aembleton »

age_of_stone wrote: post #106
throwaway1997 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's controlled outrage. The Chinese government controls what they see and therefore where the outrage is directed towards. The average Chinese person either doesn't know about Tinanmen or agrees with it, but are outraged by this.

"The average Chinese person either doesn't know about Tinanmen" I am an average Chinese person but I know it since I was a teenager. I suggest that you don't assume that Chinese people is controlled like puppet, that's simply wrong.

How did you find out about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests? Was it at school? From family or friends? Online? Do you use a VPN?

I'm curious because I don't know how that information would spread in China or if it is talked about much.

Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#113

Post by Jommi »

khc wrote: post #18
diego wrote: post #9

So many misunderstandings around this. For one, in the US we have free speech. That means that you can say anything you want, but you have to accept that you may lose customers for saying it. It doesn't matter if you believe that your customers shouldn't be pissed off. It's the Chinese in this case, but it could be any other relevant group. Second, perhaps because most Americans haven't been to China and cannot read…

> They could have tried to stay under British rule, but they gambled on the fact that they expected a very different future for China. The gamble did not pay off, As if this was a choice for people from Hong Kong

How was it not a choice? HK living standards rocketed when it was the only place for China and international capital to meet. The whole nation prospered from it, and now they are paying this price. Thats what this situation looks like to me unfortunately.

Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#114

Post by mytailorisrich »

It would be interesting to understand why an American basketball team thought it would be a good idea to make a public political statement, on a foreign issue that does not concern them, when their (main?) sponsors are apparently from the country they decided to effectively criticise... It is puzzling.

I suspect this might just be their Twitter guy who screwed up, and might now be out of a job.

Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#115

Post by age_of_stone »

aembleton wrote: post #112
age_of_stone wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The average Chinese person either doesn't know about Tinanmen" I am an average Chinese person but I know it since I was a teenager. I suggest that you don't assume that Chinese people is controlled like puppet, that's simply wrong.

How did you find out about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests? Was it at school? From family or friends? Online? Do you use a VPN? I'm curious because I don't know how that information would spread in China or if it is talked about much.

I watched the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests on China official TV daily when it was broadcast until the end of May 1989. I was a teenager at that time. we talked about it at school. we talked about at home. we talked about it heavily at college. we just didn't talk much about it publicly. nobody got arrested by simply talking about it, which may not be like what you might be thinking.

when I was young, there was no GFW. I remembered that I visited lots of western medias about it to better understand it by two-sided stories. and I believe that I did better understand it.

I do use VPN as many of others when I am in China. It's a common thing.

Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#116

Post by mytailorisrich »

cannadhopefu wrote: post #62
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the NBA were big in Spain, and the guy had said "Fight for Freedom, Stand with Catalonia", I expect he would have had to apologize too. The government is more involved in China, because the government is more involved with everything in China, but there are few countries in the world where people don't get mad at foreigners wading into touchy political issues.

> government is more involved with everything in China There lies in the difference. In Spain, it would be the people demanding it. In China, its the authoritative government that is not only demanding but also threatening. Its not quite apples to apples.

You obviously do not know China and this issue.

Hongkong's takeover by the British has been a humiliation for China and the Chinese people, which has been provoking strong feelings on their part since well before the Communist Party was even founded.

That China must get Hongkong back is a highly consensual opinion among the Chinese. This was a policy of the Communist Party because that really is something that every Chinese strongly wanted.

There are elements of wanting independence for Hongkong in the current protests and of foreign interference (whether it is true or not, this is how it looks). This is an absolute red flag for Chinese. In fact if TVs were showing everything we are shown in the West the government would have to act more strongly against the protesters by popular demand.

The Chinese government may not be democratic but that does not mean that it can ignore public opinion or that its policies never align with what the people want.

Campaigning for democracy was always going to be a uphill struggle in Hongkong, but these violent protests (which can be qualified of 'riots') have been highly counterproductive.

Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#117

Post by Jommi »

aembleton wrote: post #112
age_of_stone wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The average Chinese person either doesn't know about Tinanmen" I am an average Chinese person but I know it since I was a teenager. I suggest that you don't assume that Chinese people is controlled like puppet, that's simply wrong.

How did you find out about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests? Was it at school? From family or friends? Online? Do you use a VPN? I'm curious because I don't know how that information would spread in China or if it is talked about much.

The moment you want you access the internet as a chinese kid, you can google tianmen and get information about it. Its not of course always the correct information that is on the first results, but its not like its completely wiped.

Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#118

Post by age_of_stone »

Jommi wrote: post #117
aembleton wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you find out about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests? Was it at school? From family or friends? Online? Do you use a VPN? I'm curious because I don't know how that information would spread in China or if it is talked about much.

The moment you want you access the internet as a chinese kid, you can google tianmen and get information about it. Its not of course always the correct information that is on the first results, but its not like its completely wiped.

you are right. but there is bigger question of what information is "correct". no offense, it'd be naive to treat the first result of google result as being correct. we all know there is such a thing called SEO.

Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#119

Post by GooglyMoogly »

dirtyid wrote: post #110
GooglyMoogly wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google said no to China's censorship and is doing pretty well.

In 2018, Google made 3 billion in Chinese ad sales. Facebook made 5 billion.

My thought is that it's ok to deal with China as long as they play by our rules not their rules (such as censorship). If they see that they can still operate successfully under a system with freedom of speech, maybe they won't be so against it.

But yes, you do have to be careful not to let them become a large enough percentage of revenue that the company would be in danger if China started threatening to pull out.

Re: The NBA Feels a Backlash in China After a Tweet Supporting Hong Kong

#120

Post by ekianjo »

age_of_stone wrote: post #108
ekianjo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them are brainwashed by one party politics and one party news in their own country so I am not sure their outrage means anything.

how many Chinese people have you ever talked to before you say "most of them are brainwashed"? If more than 1 billion people are brainwashed in the era of Internet, either 1. it is a huge success of Chinese government or 2. it's not the truth. As we all know, VPN is very popular in China. It's just an easy job to access information out of Great Fire Wall. thinking critically, could you be "brainwashed" by some degree…

vPN is very popular in China? In what range? Thousands of users? Hundreds of thousands? Dozens of millions? Hundreds of millions? The scale matters completely for the discussion.

And brainwashing does not start with the internet. education is a major source of brainwashing and do not discount mass media either which still shapes culture even in hyper connected countries like the US.

Brainwashing works, its not even a remotely disputable claim, we have had two large countries going thru major brainwashing efforts in the 20th century with the Third Reich and the Soviet Union and the results were very convincing in terms of how effective brainwashing can be. Not sure why you would discount brainwashing when China went thru the Cultural Revolution to basically make all dissident voices extinct or irrelevant.

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