For the many millions around the world who love basketball, LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers is a legend, who has done an excellent job promoting the game, and at the same time focusing attention on social issues in the US.
That is why it is so amazing that James made such an incredibly insensitive mistake last week by criticizing Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey for tweeting on Oct. 4 to “Fight for Freedom, Stand for Hong Kong.”
Morey was, of course, right in his support for freedom and democracy in Hong Kong, but soon after his tweet, things started to go wrong: Chinese Central Television immediately canceled a number of planned NBA pre-season games in China — threatening the NBA’s lucrative broadcasting income from those games — while Chinese companies such as smartphone brand Vivo and Anta Sports Shoes withdrew their sponsorship.
BACKTRACKING
The NBA, through its commissioner Adam Silver, attempted damage control: In an initial statement, he defended Morey’s right to free speech, while at the same time, he tried to pacify the Chinese side by apologizing.
It did not help: The Chinese side continued to threaten to cancel broadcasts of all NBA games.
That is where LeBron James came in. After returning from playing some exhibition games in China, James seemingly sided with the repressive Communist regime by attacking Daryl Morey’s tweet as “misinformed” and “not educated” on the Hong Kong situation. He added, for good form, that this was a “very delicate, a very sensitive situation.”
Yes, Mr James, situations where people are deprived of their freedom and their rights are indeed “delicate and sensitive” — particularly for those who are being repressed. That is why it is essential that those who still enjoy freedom and democracy stand up for those universal rights, and do not let themselves be bamboozled into siding with the repressors.
PROFITS OR PRINCIPLES?
The problem is, of course, not just James himself: It is the whole of the NBA, and so many other businesses and corporations that have gotten themselves dependent on a repressive regime in Beijing that does not allow freedom of expression.
The NBA episode is a stark reminder to Western companies that they have to stand up for universal principles and values. If they succumb to the orchestrated pressure emanating from Beijing, whether it is on Hong Kong, Tibet, East Turkestan or Taiwan, then they undermine precious freedom and democracy around the world, and present an invitation on a platter to the repressive rulers in Beijing to do this time and again.
FREEDOM COSTS
The best thing that came out of this whole affair is the response to James by Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter — himself a Turkish dissident who has been exiled by his country’s authoritarian government, led by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — who tweeted on Oct. 14: “Haven’t seen or talked to my family 5 years, Jailed my dad, My siblings can’t find jobs, Revoked my passport, International arrest warrant, My family can’t leave the country, Got Death Threats every day, Got attacked, harassed, Tried to kidnap me in Indonesia, FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.”
Go Houston Rockets, go Boston Celtics!
Gerrit van der Wees is a former Dutch diplomat and teaches the history of Taiwan at George Mason University in Virginia. From 1980 through 2016 he served as editor of the Taiwan Communique.
In November last year, a man struck a woman with a steel bar and killed her outside a hospital in China’s Fujian Province. Later, he justified his actions to the police by saying that he attacked her because she was small and alone, and he was venting his anger after a dispute with a colleague. To the casual observer, it could be seen as another case of an angry man gone mad for a moment, but on closer inspection, it reflects the sad side of a society long brutalized by violent political struggles triggered by crude Leninism and Maoism. Starting
If social media interaction is any yardstick, India remained one of the top countries for Taiwan last year. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has on several occasions expressed enthusiasm to strengthen cooperation with India, one of the 18 target nations in her administration’s New Southbound Policy. The past year was instrumental in fostering Taiwan-India ties and will be remembered for accelerated momentum in bilateral relations. However, most of it has been confined to civil society circles. Even though Taiwan launched its southbound policy in 2016, the potential of Taiwan-India engagement remains underutilized. It is crucial to identify what is obstructing greater momentum
In terms of the economic outlook for the semiconductor industry, Taiwan has outperformed the rest of the world for three consecutive years. This is quite rare. In addition, Taiwan has been playing an important role in the US-China technology dispute, and both want Taiwan on their side, reflecting the remaking of the nation’s semiconductor industry. Under the leadership of — above all — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the industry as a whole has shifted from a focus on capacity to a focus on quality, as companies now have to be able to provide integration of hardware and software, as well as
US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy on China and the Indo-Pacific region will have huge repercussions for Taiwan. The US Department of State in the final weeks of former US president Donald Trump’s term took several actions clearly aimed to push Biden’s foreign policy to build on Trump’s achievements. Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s announcement on the final day of the Trump administration that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was committing “genocide and crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang was welcome, but comes far too late. The recent dropping of “self-imposed” restrictions on meetings between Taiwanese and US officials was
RSS