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The View | China’s targeting of the NBA shows why it may fail at building soft power – and the Chinese dream
- By narrowing the boundaries of commentary, China is gradually alienating outsiders who might see opportunities there
- In attacking the NBA, which does not need China and would be difficult to replace, Beijing may have finally gone too far
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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.
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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 T-shirt slogans that seem to suggest Taipei and Hong Kong are on a par with Beijing have been withdrawn.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 Kong who mocked pro-Beijing protesters resigned after the company came under pressure. Cathay Pacific chairman John Slosar, who said that his company wouldn’t dare to tell employees what to think, found himself out of work.
There is ritual humiliation in China’s weaponising of free speech. First comes the outcry by netizens, one whose intensity might be ratcheted up or damped down by authorities. Then comes a craven apology by the company, desperate as it is to protect its fast-growing China business.
In important cases, the chief executive or chairman flies to Beijing, where authorities dress him down for his wrongdoings.
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