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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

NBA stars pressed to end China sportswear endorsements over Xinjiang

  • US congressional commission says basketball players face ‘reputational risks’ of being associated with forced labour
  • More than a dozen players are believed to have deals with Li-Ning and other Chinese brands

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A Miami Heat player wearing Li-Ning shoes during an NBA playoff game this year. Photo: AFP
Robert Delaneyin Washington
A bipartisan US congressional body is urging NBA players to end any endorsement deals they have with Li-Ning and other Chinese brands, citing allegations of forced labour in the country’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, chairmen of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), said on Tuesday that more than a dozen players had such deals and that they created “reputational risks”.

“Many global brands are ending the sourcing of cotton goods made in Xinjiang,” Merkley and McGovern said in a letter to Chris Paul, president of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), and the union’s executive director, Michele Roberts.
“By contrast, Anta, Li-Ning and Peak have publicly embraced Xinjiang cotton, likely making them complicit in the use of forced labour. In light of this, we urge the NBPA to work with its members to raise awareness about the ongoing genocide taking place in Xinjiang and the role of forced labour in the production of products made by brands that NBPA members have endorsed,” they said.
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“We hope that the result of such efforts would be that the players would leverage their contracts with Anta, Li-Ning and Peak to push these companies to end their use of Xinjiang cotton,” added the lawmakers, both of whom are Democrats. “Short of that outcome, we encourage players to end their endorsement deals with these companies.”

The commission’s warning targets current and former National Basketball Association stars, including retired Miami Heat player Dwyane Wade, and keeps the league’s relationship with China in the spotlight, where it has been since Daryl Morey, then the Houston Rockets’ general manager, tweeted his support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong in 2019, a controversy that threatened to end the league’s business in China.

Wade has a Li-Ning-sponsored clothing line, while Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors reportedly has a shoe deal with Anta valued at as much as US$80 million.

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