BIG TROUBLE IN ‘LITTLE CHINA’

If you’ve been keeping up with current events over the past few weeks, you’ll no doubt have heard of the continuing Hong Kong protests and the fight their citizens are having with authoirties. In short, Hong Kong has been apart of China but has its own democracy outside of the communist system of China. That system is slowly changing to China having full control of Hong Kong.

Future NBA games have been banned from networks in China, after the general manager for the Houston Rockets team voiced support for the pro-democracy protests on Twitter.

Following this retaliation from China, NBA officials were quick to backpedal as far as they could, even coercing members of the Rockets and LeBron James to speak in glowing terms about China. LeBron in particular has been heavily criticized for his involvement in other social justice issues and his absence for Hong Kong

But basketball wasn’t the only sport to be targeted by China’s suppression of free speech over these past few weeks.

Shortly after, angry mobs of gamers took to the internet to voice their displeasure to Blizzard Entertainment after they banned competitive “Hearthstone” game player, Blitzchung (Wai Chung Ng), for stating his solidarity with the Hong Kong protesters during an official postgame live stream. As news of this spread, resentment quickly flared up in both the Blizzard fan base and the gaming community as a whole, and only a few days later, a group of Hearthstone competitors at American University, in Washington, D.C., held up a sign reading “Free Hong Kong” during an official livestream.

But this kind of corporate greed comes at an insidious cost to freedom for all people. As long as American corporations remain so heavily invested in China, their global reach will extend far beyond their borders and will help suppress freedom of expression.

 Speaking of freedom of expression, other famous names in support for Hong Kong now include Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “South Park.” Aside from the pair’s own public statement on the NBA controversy, their show has now been officially banned from China over its recent episode criticizing the NBA and the Chinese government. Another prominent name to be banned from the Chinese internet is Pewdiepie. In a recent episode of his “Meme Review” series, the YouTuber compared president Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh, a character also banned from Chinese media for a number of years now.

Thankfully not everyone is happy to sit idle while corporate greed runs unchecked. 

In the NBA season opener, Shaq backed the Rockets’ GM adding that it’s our value as Americans to have the free speech, meanwhile Charles Barkley pointed out that Chinese basketball star Yao Ming became the hall of famer he is on the Rockets team and therefore it wasn’t right for the Rockets GM to tweet his support for Hong Kong. But the issue stems further than Lebron putting out a half-assed statement in regards to a situation he isn’t apart of. 

To what extent does a foreign power, like China, involve itself into the media we consume? The examples shown above are clear moments of this question coming to life. As Shaq bluntly put it on TV, “China can’t tell us what to do and we can’t tell them what to do that’s the bottom line.” It’s an issue when celebrities who consider themselves advocates of social justice pick and choose what to ignore, but it’s an even bigger  issue for situations like Hong Kong to be censored out simply because the higher ups have some sort of invovlement in the Chinese market.

As the Hong Kong situation continues to develop, there’s no telling what to expect next. There likely will be no resolution for a long time to come. For the moment, as political figures and average citizens alike come together to voice displeasure with corporations who cater to the suppression of free speech, the fight to preserve the inalienable right to freedom of thought and expression will carry on.