NBA (National Basketball Association)

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said the decision of whether the league should do business in China should rest with the US government. Speaking to CNN’s Bob Costas in a Tuesday interview, Silver responded to a question about the NBA’s stance on China amid deteriorating US-China relations and allegations of widespread human rights abuses. “There are definitely trade-offs there, and somebody could say given the system of government in China, you the NBA should make a decision not to operate there,” Silver said. “I would only say that at the end of the day, I think those are decisions for our government in terms of where American businesses should operate.” As the league has shown increasing

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Inkstone Index features one important number about China to give you insight into the rising power. 625 million: The number of basketball fans in China. It is no secret that China loves basketball. But just how big of a deal the sport is in the country? 625 million people call themselves fans of the sport, according to a 2018 industry report by China’s tech giant Tencent. Of that number, 143 million people in China, or slightly less than the entire population of Russia, consider themselves to be “hardcore” fans, meaning they regularly watch and play basketball.  The rest of the fans, about 482 million, are considered general fans, who enjoy basketball but play it

Basketball legend Michael Jordan’s 8-year-long saga through the Chinese courts resulted in a partial victory for his intellectual property case against a Chinese sports brand. China’s top judicial body, the Supreme People’s Court, on March 4 found Qiaodan Sports, a company based in China’s southern Fujian province, had illegally used Jordan’s name in Chinese characters, according to the verdict. However, the court also ruled that the dribbling silhouette used as the Chinese company’s logo did not violate Jordan’s portraiture rights, meaning Qiaodan Sports could continue to use the image.   China's Supreme People's Court has handed basketball legend #MichaelJordan's brand #AirJordan a victory

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