Minxin Pei says China’s recent attempt to bully the National Basketball Association (NBA) into apologising after an executive at the Houston Rockets tweeted his support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, has backfired. The NBA, embracing freedom of expression, has said the executive will not be punished. Although the American league’s official Chinese partners suspended ties with the NBA last week, Tencent has resumed online broadcasts of NBA preseason games, featuring among others the Los Angeles Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets in Shanghai on October 10.

The boycott has highlighted how China is abusing its controls on free speech by economic means. The author says Beijing had “successfully intimidated many a Western company and foreign government” – by pressuring them “into bending to its will.” The list of punishment is long - France, Germany, and the UK were punished for hosting the Dalai Lama. The same with Norway for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010 etc.

The author says this time China made “a huge – and potentially costly – miscalculation.” Sport is a serious business. China may be a lucrative market for NBA, but Tencent's stance also highlights the NBA’s importance to China and Chinese businesses, which are worth some $4 billion. The basketball league is hugely popular in China, with nearly 500 million people watching its last season on Tencent alone.

The NBA is “very valuable friend to China.” Its relationship with the league is one of the “great successes in its cultural and commercial relations” with the US, and a “powerful” example of Sino-American “sports diplomacy.” Basketball once united China and the US, reminiscent of Ping-pong diplomacy in the 1970s that sped US detente with China.

In April 1971 during the world table tennis championships in Nagoya, Japan, the American player, Glenn Cowan boarded a bus, and made acquaintance with China’s greatest table tennis player, Zhuang Zedong. China’s leaders were determined to deploy Ping-Pong as the perfect instrument of Communist propaganda. Accepting an impromptu invitation from the Chinese, the American team then toured China, writing the biggest story of the year. Chinese premier Zhou Enlai seized on the opportunity to grant visas to foreign journalists, covering the world-changing episodes.

When the whole world heard Zhou tell the team that they had “opened a new page in the relations of the Chinese and American people,” Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger were listening. They had good reasons to accept Zhou’s olive branch. Nixon desperately wanted to end the war in Vietnam, and the Russians refused to play peacemaker. China was the only other player that had clout on Hanoi. Nixon would be standing for re-election in 1972. Vietnam and a declining relationship with Russia had undermined Johnson’s presidency.

Three months later, Kissinger secretly visited Beijing. In February 1972 Nixon made his own journey, breaking the ice between China and the US after decades of isolation. Mao and “Nixon did not squander the opportunity that sports diplomacy presented. But, by picking a fight with the NBA, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government could well have. At a time when Sino-American relations are in freefall, this is the last thing China needs.”

The author fears that “such self-defeating behavior is likely to continue – and cost the CPC dearly. The more friends China turns into enemies, whether out of hubris or instinct, the easier it will be for the US to assemble a broad coalition to contain its power and ambitions. At that point, the Chinese bully’s favorite tactic for defending its interests will become even less effective.”

Surprisingly some Chinese netizens seemed have a sense of humour. China’s jokers said online: “China-U.S. relations began with Ping-Pong, and they’ve ended with basketball.” However there is optimism in both China and the US that the controversy could quieten down six months from now.

It remains to be see whether Beijing would learn a lesson from it and move on.