NBA (National Basketball Association)

David Stern liked to tell the story of travelling China in 1990 when a local guide in Xian revealed her favorite team. “You know, I am a great fan of the team of the red oxen,” she told Stern and his wife, Dianne.  Cue confusion then smiles on realizing it was the Chinese translation for the Chicago Bulls. Nowadays, the whole of China knows the Zhijiage Gongniu, as they are known in Mandarin, and Stern is as more to credit for that than anyone – even their star player. “Without David Stern, the NBA would not be what it is today,” Michael Jordan, the six-time NBA champion with the Chicago Bulls and talisman of that 1990 team, said after Stern’s death at the age of 77 on New Year’s Day. “He gu

As Jeremy Lin tears up the Chinese Basketball Association this season for the Beijing Ducks, he’s returned to form in many ways. One of the most notable – aesthetically speaking – is his haircut. With shaved sides and a short, straight top, his Beijing styling looks somewhat similar to his hair during the “Linsanity” craze, when the Taiwanese-American first shot to fame in the NBA in 2011. Lin has long been a style icon off the court, setting trends with his fashion sense and his eclectic, sometimes controversial, hairstyles.  Here we’ve collected a definitive list of his most memorable hairdos, in chronological order. Palo Alto: The So Cal Beginnings         View this post on Insta

This will be remembered by many as the year that China did near-irreparable damage to its international reputation and image. Chinese leaders and policymakers have generally understood that China’s gradual rise to international prominence would bring with it challenges, especially regarding the perceptions of others. To allay the fears of outsiders about its rise, China has, for the past decade or so, attempted a multipronged charm offensive aimed at the rest of the world. Billions were spent on soft-power initiatives such as the Beijing Olympics, promotional videos, media expansion and the proliferation of Confucius Institutes across the globe. Diplomatic efforts went beyond traditional for

Arsenal midfielder Mesut Özil has become the latest international celebrity caught in a political storm in China after he strongly criticized Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang. The German soccer player hit out at the Muslim world’s silence over allegations of widespread human rights abuses in the far western region, where a million mainly Uygur Muslims have reportedly been detained in re-education camps. The comments prompted a backlash from Chinese newspapers and social media users, some of whom accused him of “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.” China’s state broadcaster CCTV did not air Arsenal’s Sunday matchup against Manchester City. Özil, whose family originates from Turkey, pos

After weeks of uncertainty and calls for a boycott of the NBA in China, basketball fans showed up online in droves to watch a season opener between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers.  According to Tencent Sports, the league’s exclusive streaming partner in China, 25 million viewers watched the live stream, dispelling any speculation of a popular backlash against the NBA. By comparison, 21 million Chinese viewers watched the second-to-last final game of the previous season between the Toronto Raptors and the Golden State Warriors in June. According to NBA China, it was China’s most-watched NBA game via live stream. (It's unclear whether Tencent and NBA China use the same met

Basketball star Jeremy Lin is relishing the chance to lead a team in China, now that he is joining the Beijing Ducks. Coming off of an NBA championship season with the Toronto Raptors, he is playing this season in the Chinese Basketball Association. It’s the first time he is playing basketball professionally in China, where he will reportedly earn $3 million for one year of playing in the Chinese league.

The attack on Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet (“Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong”) put China’s vision for a new world order in stark relief for an American audience, showing the lengths to which China will go in its campaign to squelch free speech. Xi Jinping’s administration is doing to foreign businesses what it has long done to domestic dissenters: punishing those whose words stray outside ever-narrower red lines. Airlines have had to redraw maps. T-shirt slogans that seem to suggest Taipei and Hong Kong are on a par with Beijing have been withdrawn. A pro-democracy shoe designer saw the shoes he had designed for Nike taken off the shelf. A BNP lawyer in Hong Ko

A week into a crisis in China caused by a controversial tweet, the NBA may have found some hope for a turnaround. Online giant Tencent, the league’s exclusive streaming partner in the country, resumed live streaming NBA pre-season games on Monday, just days after it suspended streaming of exhibition games between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets. But it’s not yet business as usual for the NBA in China.  Tencent has scheduled the majority of the pre-season games to be streamed in text updates, rather than in live video, which analysts say is a sign of the murky state of the league’s future.  The bigger question awaits: Will China play the league’s regular-season games that begin

It’s been a tough week for NBA fans in China, who feel torn between their favorite sport and expressing loyalty to their country. Days before Thursday night’s pre-season game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets in Shanghai, many were worried the game wouldn’t happen at all.  But despite online calls for a boycott, the fans showed up, filling up the 18,000 seater Mercedes-Benz Arena, even if they were feeling emotionally conflicted about being there.  Just watching the game has become a political statement to some in mainland China, after NBA commissioner Adam Silver vowed several times to back free speech, despite enormous backlash in the country. He had been under pressure

Washington’s flood of ill will toward Beijing may be spilling onto America’s streets, according to pundits and policymakers measuring the impact of a Twitter post that sparked the National Basketball Association’s China crisis. The now-deleted tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supporting Hong Kong protests has elevated the topic of China’s censorship among Americans in a bigger way than President Donald Trump’s trade war has highlighted trade imbalances, copyright violations and a host of other issues the US government has been pressuring Beijing about for decades. “Nobody knows what an entity list is,” said Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute