interesting take on the national basketball association's imbroglio with the Chinese government

The story of immediate outrage from Chinese basketball fans over the Houston Rockets basketball team General Manager Morey's tweet suffers from the inconvenient truth that Twitter is banned in China.  Hmm.

And Ben Thompson's article gets better.  

Chinese companies like Baidu, Tencent (WeChat, etc.)  Alibaba, et. al. are, of course, allowed into the U.S. while U.S. companies remain locked out of China. Chinese attacks on U.S. tech companies are allowed, encouraged, and augmented by China's censors.  The attacks are assisted by the Chinese military and by the "Great Firewall."

But Ben tells us much more.

Xi Jinping and the Communist Party does not hesitate to use state power to tell the Chinese people how they should think. Displays of patriotism, especially from young people, shows that the party's propaganda machine has mastered the power of symbol and symbolism in the mass media and social media. While imposing very tight censorship, the Communist Party has also learned to force the most popular artists and the most experienced internet companies to help Xi Jinping instill Chinese with patriotic zeal. All Chinese "influencers" are part of the propaganda machine, enforcing "correct" thoughts.

China Central Television (CCTV) wrote, "we oppose [NBA commissioner] Silver's claim to support [Houston General Manager] Morey's right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech," Think about that a few seconds.  What does "freedom" mean?

And, of course, TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Hong Kong protests, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, as one might expect.

So the question is:  will more companies, like Silver and the NBA give up all the money and stand by their values?  Or will they sell out and impose Chinese censorship?  I think it depends.  Microsoft and eBay will sell out for sure.  We already have.  Will Amazon?  Walmart?  It's hard to say.

Read Ben Thompson's entire analysis.