Authored by Brian Cates via The Epoch Times,
Daryl Morey had no idea the tweet he published on Oct. 4 would ignite a firestorm that continues to rage.
But that’s exactly what happened.
Morey is the general manager of the Houston Rockets, in one of the world’s most popular sports leagues: the National Basketball Association (NBA).
The tweet that Morey sent out into the social media world was simple. It contained none of his own typed words; it merely displayed an image:
That simple image, with the words “Fight For Freedom, Stand With Hong Kong,” ignited a firestorm and called attention to a dynamic that had been working quietly beneath the surface.
And that dynamic is how China has been positioning itself for economic and cultural dominance.
China presents a vast market that has many U.S. companies wishing for unrestricted access. The NBA is hardly alone in this regard. But few Western corporations have so solidly joined themselves at the hip with China the way the NBA has.
This is why the American people were treated to the startling sight of prominent NBA players and coaches stuttering and mumbling their way through interviews when asked to comment on China’s atrocious human rights record - something that has taken center stage again recently because of the Hong Kong democracy protests, as well as a video of hundreds of blindfolded Uyghurs being shipped off to a detention facility.
Another big corporation that ended up revealing troubling questions about itself was Blizzard Entertainment, the popular video gaming publisher that makes such games as Hearthstone and World of Warcraft, and is releasing the highly anticipated game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.”
Since then, the entire free world has had an eye-opening look at exactly how China intends to use its vast economic leverage outside its borders.
And what an ugly look it was.
The Chinese regime doesn’t have to explicitly demand that Western companies punish its critics for them. Many people who run these companies will leap to censor and oppress their own employees without waiting for the Chinese to demand it.
Many top companies are so determined to keep access to the Chinese market at all costs, they will enforce speech codes inside their own industry just as stringently as the Chinese regime would do themselves if the business were inside mainland China.
This certainly isn’t what we were told to expect when President Richard Nixon “opened” China back in 1972.
The popular theory that was sold for decades was that by engaging China and opening our doors to them, we were going to “democratize” them. Take a good look at what you have seen recently, as U.S. corporate interests bowed the knee to actual tyrants.
The exact opposite happened.
China is making...