Let’s imagine a hypothetical where Chinese fans showed up at NFL games protesting police violence and racial inequality in the U.S. The NFL and the NBA are two leagues with very different cultures surrounding political speech, but it is nonetheless striking to contrast the attitudes of these politicians toward political protests in the NFL and political protests in China.
NFL players, the president said, should “stand proudly, or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe shouldn’t be in the country.” “It’s very sad” the “way were pandering to China,” said the man who has been extremely critical of the NFL players protesting. Tim Scott’s response to the NFL protests: “This country is the beacon of life for all of mankind and anyone that stands up or refuses to stand, I think you’re making a drastic mistake.” But what about China? Scott said: “Since when did we need the Communist Party of China’s approval to have an opinion? It’s a sad day when Americans can’t come out in support of freedom & democracy without fear of retaliation.” President Trump, of course, was just as hypocritical.
Ted Cruz said, “People ought to be able to enjoy football without it being turned into a political statement that many understandably see as a slight to our flag and to the many people who stood up and fought to defend our country.” Last week, Cruz struck a very different tone in the NBA controversy, cautioning that when the NBA self-censors, it risks becoming an “arm of Chinese censorship.” Cruz was hardly the only major American political figure to criticize the NBA for bowing to Chinese censorship while encouraging NFL owners and players to self-censor. Recall when National Football League (NFL) players, led by Colin Kaepernick, began protesting racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem at football games. The first problem is the sheer hypocrisy of those most loudly critical of American firms self-censoring in order to appease the Chinese government. Rather than take on the very large question of whether American companies should do business in China, let’s deconstruct several of the debate’s maladies.
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But, unfortunately, resolving this question is made harder because the debate is marred by a general lack of analytical clarity and is instead being driven by uninformed moral outrage, free speech absolutism, and American exceptionalism. There is no easy answer to the very difficult question of if or how American firms should do business in China. There’s no guarantee these values will win out.
Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values.
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17, arguing that while Facebook might be a messy platform full of fake news and election interference, at least it doesn’t have Chinese speech rules:Ĭhina is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. Meanwhile, the gaming company Blizzard banned a player who brought up Hong Kong, and Apple decided to pull HKMap-the police-tracking app relied on by Hong Kong protestors-from the App Store. The first dust-up occurred when Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted-and-then-deleted his support for Hong Kong protestors, which led to a debate about NBA owners and players self-censoring in order not to offend the Chinese government.
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Should American companies-the National Basketball Association (NBA), Apple, Facebook-be doing business in China? Many people appear to have strong feelings about this question, particularly after a series of controversies have erupted in the past two weeks.