A basketball game between China and visiting Puerto Rico deteriorated into a mass brawl that state media denounced as a "night of shame," saying it set a bad example for the 2008 Olympic hosts.
The fighting erupted at Beijing Capital Gymnasium on Friday night after two Chinese players charged off the bench to fight Puerto Rican players in the dying moments of a Stankovic Cup game in which China was leading.
The bad feeling spilled into the stands where 3,000 home fans hurled abuse along with drinks, plastic bottles, yoghurt and popcorn, local media reported yesterday. Officials abandoned the game as the visitors fled to the locker room, one shielding his head with a plastic chair.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Chinese players Li Nan (李楠) and Mo Ke (莫科) had reacted after seeing teammate Yi Jianlian (易建聯) fouled hard by Puerto Rican center Manuel Narvaez, the China Daily said.
"Fists, plastic cups, water bottles and even a fan's shoe went flying during the fracas with China's Yi Jianlian, Tang Zhengdong (唐正東), Mo Ke and Li Nan right in the middle of it," the daily said.
China's basketball association deplored the violence as setting a poor example just three years before Beijing hosts the summer Olympics, and said it would adopt measures to prevent such violence from recurring.
"Such behavior is very disgusting and leaves an extremely bad impression," the China Sports Daily quoted association spokesman Li Jinsheng (
NBA superstar Yao Ming (
"The Chinese basketball team should learn a lesson from this incident," Yao was quoted as saying by www.sports.sohu.com.
Victory in the game, abandoned with China ahead 91-80, was later awarded to the hosts. A basketball association official said China should apologize to fans.
In a story headlined "China suffers night of shame," the China Daily said the brawl "badly hurt the growing reputation of Chinese basketball."
"This is the ugliest scene I have ever experienced in my life," 31-year-old fan Wang Kai said.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS