Commentary: Why Daryl Morey's infamous tweet struck such a raw nerve in China
It was the tweet heard 'round the world, especially across the Pacific: "Fight for Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong." The Houston Rockets' general manager, Daryl Morey, posted it in support of protests against China's crackdown on Hong Kong's freedoms.
The tweet was deleted and Morey apologized for any offense. But the reverberations keep rolling like ocean waves. The NBA has lost Chinese sponsors, and Chinese TV won't broadcast Rockets' preseason games there. Rockets star James Harden apologized for the tweet with, "You know, we love China. We love playing there ..."
From the other side, the NBA got smacked down by Democratic and Republican politicians and by fans for what came off as a namby-pamby statement about the "regrettable" offense the tweet caused, and for not endorsing Morey's right to free expression with more ardor.
China is no basketball backwater. It's the NBA's second-biggest market, worth billions. If it weren't, would all of this be happening because of one tweet?
Kenneth Pomeranz is a scholar of China and East Asia, a professor of modern Chinese history at the University of Chicago and author of several works on that country's culture and economy, including the forthcoming "Why Is China So Big?"
He sees the NBA flare-up in context, as the yield on a social and cultural crop that official China began sowing nearly 30 years ago, after the Tiananmen Square protests - a "patriotic education" imbuing the Chinese with a history that emphasizes how foreigners have victimized
