If you had told me one week ago that over the next seven days the NBA would get into a Twitter dispute with China so severe it would prompt that oddest of couples Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ted Cruz to team up and sign a joint letter imploring the NBA to stand up for freedom of speech and freedom of expression, I would have laughed in your face.

But here we are. As an ardent NBA fan and geopolitical news junkie, this is by far my favorite news story of at least the past year. Under the surface of what appears to be an inconsequential twitter feud is a story that weaves together the history, culture, economic entanglement, and geopolitical power struggle that make up the complex relationship between China and the USA.

And South Park is involved, too, making a mockery of everyone involved. (Did you know Winnie the Pooh is banned in China because people were sharing memes likening President Xi to Winnie the Pooh? That’s a real thing!) All we need is for President Trump to wade into this controversy and we will have a full-fledged international incident on our hands. Such is life in 2019!

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There are myriad details to this story, but here is the TL;DR as of Thursday 10/10:

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Ok, that was a lot.

Pause for a second. Take a breath.

Let’s zoom out and look at the big picture. China is using its economic power to keep American citizens from speaking their mind. More than that, China is using its economic power to censor critical voices in American culture. This is a big deal.

South Park cut right to the crux of the issue. The premise of the now banned episode is Randy goes to China to try to expand his marijuana business. He is joined on the plane to China by Marvel characters, NBA players, and Disney princesses. South Park is mocking corporate America’s amorality and willingness to censor themselves for greater profit. American corporations are silent when it comes to China’s human rights abuses, forced labor camps, political prisons, and general authoritarian politics.

This is what it looks like when a capitalist economy powered by a freedom ideology does business in a state-run pseudo-capitalist authoritarian country. The NBA faces pressure from its Chinese business partners to shut down political expression that goes against the party line on one side and pressure from its core American audience to support freedom of speech on the other side. The NBA is walking a fine line. Move to embrace Chinese censorship too blatantly and American audiences may shrink. But come out too strongly in support of Daryl Morey and the Hong Kong protests and the Chinese audience may completely disappear. (Or would it? More on this in a few paragraphs.)

Losing the Chinese market would be a disaster for the NBA. For over 30 years, the NBA has aggressively marketed basketball overseas with the goal of basketball becoming a global sport. This has largely been successful, and this past July the Chinese broadcaster Tencent signed a 5-year, $1.5 billion deal to be the NBA’s exclusive digital partner in China. Losing that partnership would affect everyone associated with the NBA: players, agents, managers, team employees, shoe companies, sports media companies, journalists. It would also affect future team rosters and which teams will contend for the championship as long laid plans are shattered by an unexpected salary cap drop.

If China is successful in pressuring the NBA to censor its employees supporting Hong Kong, we may have entered a new economic era. While China’s economy has surpassed the US economy by some, but not all, metrics, this would be a new level of influence. China’s economy will have become powerful enough to dictate how Americans decide to use their rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. We could be witnessing a turning point in economic history and geopolitics, a symbolic passing of the economic torch from the old superpower to the new.

The NBA’s predicament will be repeated as China’s economic power continues to grow and the Chinese leverage that power to dictate terms to American businesses. Kowtowing to Chinese censorship may become the cost of doing business.

For example, ESPN has been very careful to present information about the NBA – China incident in pro-government language. Anchors at ESPN describe the protests as “anti-government” instead of “pro-democracy” and ESPN aired a graphic showing Chinese territory to include the disputed “Nine-Dash Line” area of the South China Sea. These are huge concessions to the Chinese government that actively promote Beijing’s worldview at the expense of American ideals and national interest.

Before going too far down the rabbit hole, I want to emphasize that Chinese economic dominance and censorship remains only a possibility. There are signs that China wants to deescalate this situation out of fear that mainland Chinese may start paying closer attention to Hong Kong and question the CCP propaganda. The NBA may have more leverage than it realizes: how would millions of Chinese NBA fans respond if Beijing outlawed the NBA? I bet many Chinese fans would find a way to watch the games anyway. Maybe that would be a crack in the CCP’s rhetorical armor and lead to more Chinese citizens questioning their government. It’s too early to know where this ends up.

Whether or not China succeeds in censoring the NBA, we have learned more about what a Chinese led global order may look like. No protests, no dissent, no questioning of the Chinese government from anyone anytime anywhere.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens this season. Will fans in America show up at games with pro-Hong Kong signs? Will any players or team executives comment about Chinese human rights abuses? How will the NBA respond if these things happen? How will China respond? Get the popcorn ready.

On a domestic politics note, this incident has united just about every American politician. It’s a rare thing to see Ben Sasse, Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez on the same side of an issue. It makes me feel good that there’s at least something unifying in these divisive times.