China Briefing | Why did China react so strongly to Daryl Morey’s tweet and the NBA?
- The reasons for its extraordinary reaction are more nuanced than simple government orchestration
- But while national outrage has reached fever pitch, this narrow-minded nationalism does not bode well for China’s image overseas
With an image containing just seven words, which existed for merely a few hours before he deleted it, the October 4 tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey should definitely count among the most expensive ever posted on the platform.
It also ignited a geopolitical firestorm that saw Chinese and US politicians, media commentators, NBA owners, basketball legends and fans all weighing in and slugging it out with their views on freedom of expression, the rise of China and its colonial humiliations, China’s perceived bullying of foreign companies, protesters waving American flags in Hong Kong and China’s national sovereignty.
A couple of weeks later, raw emotions may have started to calm down but major questions on the tweet’s implications are still being debated and definitive answers remain elusive.
For instance, many people outside China wonder whether the Chinese government deliberately provoked such an overreaction to something seemingly off the cuff so it could force foreign companies and organisations to understand the importance of self-censorship when it comes to the vast Chinese market, or whether it is so inept when it comes to public relations that it fails to grasp the Streisand effect, which means inadvertently drawing more public attention to something by trying to censor it.
In this case, many believe the intense international media coverage has magnified the Hong Kong protests and thus caused serious damage to China’s image among the millions of NBA fans around the world who are otherwise apolitical.
While that reasoning may seem valid, the reasons behind China’s extraordinary reaction or overreaction are much more nuanced and intricate.