Trump and NBA Find Doing Business in China Like Walking on Eggshells

Trump and the Sleight of the Deal

President Trump made quite a show last week of announcing a “partial” accord to end his trade war with China. Unfortunately, this was rather like British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain making quite a show in 1938 of announcing a “peace-for-our-time” accord to end German aggression.

The U.S. and China agreed on the outlines of a partial trade accord Friday that President Donald Trump said he and his counterpart Xi Jinping could sign as soon as next month.

As part of the deal, China would significantly step up purchases of U.S. agricultural commodities, agree to certain intellectual-property measures and concessions related to financial services and currency, Trump said Friday at the White House. In exchange, the U.S. will delay a tariff increase due next week as the deal is finalized, though new levies scheduled for December haven’t yet been called off.

(Bloomberg, October 11, 2019)

Frankly, anyone who knows anything about the way Trump negotiates knows that there’s probably much less to this deal than he boasts. The biggest tell is that the Chinese have not agreed to anything in writing. But to assess the substance, instead of the art, of this deal, consider this infamous boast:

Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer – sleep well tonight!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018

Because, far from denuclearizing, North Korea has increased its nuclear arsenal since then. Even worse, Trump was so eager to give the appearance of striking a deal, he granted North Korea its long-standing wish for the United States and South Korea to scale down military exercises, significantly.

As a result, not only is North Korea a bigger and more dangerous problem today, but the United States and South Korea are far less prepared to deal with it.

In a similar vein, it’s only a matter of time before we find out that this partial trade accord has only given China greater economic leverage over the United States. For, even more than North Korea, China knows all too well that it only takes idle flattery and empty promises for Trump to fold and declare a hollow victory.

For example, think of how many times you’ve heard him over the past year touting China’s promise to buy more US farm products than farmers can ever produce. Now he’s touting its promise to buy $50 billion worth as a big win. But even he can’t square that with this:

The United States has been losing, for many years, 600 to 800 Billion Dollars a year on Trade. With China we lose 500 Billion Dollars. Sorry, we’re not going to be doing that anymore!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 6, 2019

For starters, farmers will be lucky if China buys $5 billion worth of their products pursuant to any deal. And Hell will freeze over before it makes the hundreds of billions in trade concessions necessary to meet Trump’s delusional demand for balance or reciprocity.

But, above all, the prevailing concept of “face” explains why, just like North Korea, China will never give Trump the satisfaction of striking a meaningful deal.

The concept of face (‘mianzi’) … can perhaps be most closely defined as ‘dignity’ or ‘prestige’, but no translation can aptly cover all its fine nuances. … One of the worst things that can happen to someone in Chinese culture is to ‘lose’ face.

For the Chinese, causing someone to lose face on purpose can make an enemy for life and is at the root of many conflicts.

(InterNations.org: Understanding the Chines Culture)

It was patently clear even before his improbable election that Trump is too ignorant and arrogant to understand this concept. But his May 6 tweet above indicates why face is at the root of the trade war he triggered with his ill-fated tariffs. More to the point, Trump spent most of his adult life accusing the Chinese of raping and stealing from the US economy. By doing so, he made them enemies for life.

This is why it’s hard to imagine anything causing Chinese President Xi Jinping to lose face more than rewarding Trump with a political triumph. Striking a deal might be in China’s economic interest. But fear of losing face is such that Xi will just string Trump along … like a puppet. He has every reason to wait out Trump’s dystopian presidency and deal with his successor under more conducive conditions and with mutual respect.

In the meantime, Trump has already surrendered America’s position as leader of the free world. Not only has he alienated Western allies; he has willfully ignored the democratic pleas of Hong Kong protesters and abandoned Kurdish allies to the genocidal mercies of dictators in Turkey and Syria. Russia now looms as the more indispensable nation on geopolitical matters.

Now he’s devaluing its position as the world’s biggest and most influential economy. Not only has he triggered a trade war America simply cannot win; he has willfully withdrawn it from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Paris Climate Change Accord. China now looms as the more indispensable nation on geoeconomic matters.

NBA and the Triumph of Commercial Profits Over Democratic Values

It seems fitting that the following NBA humiliation played out in the geopolitical context laid out above.

The NBA and China are locked in an escalating feud sparked by a tweet that voiced support for protests in Hong Kong. …

Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted out an image which voiced support for protests in Hong Kong. In the days following, Chinese leagues, streaming services, sponsors, and partners, have cut ties with the Rockets and the NBA.

(Business Insider, October 11, 2019)

That reaction to an innocuous tweet is clearly disproportionate. But it reflects China’s determined intent to impose its totalitarian control wherever it wields economic power. I warned it would be thus:

I applaud Obama for calling China’s bluff. Not least because any real attempt to squeeze the US financially would amount to an unprecedented case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. After all, the US market is even more indispensable to China’s economic growth than China’s credit is to the US’s. …

This episode should serve as a warning to all countries around the world that are not just lapping up China’s largesse, but heralding it as a more worthy superpower than the United States. After all, China is spitting imperious and vindictive fire at the rich and mighty United States over a relatively insignificant matter – like meeting with the Dalai Lama. Therefore, just imagine what it would do to a poor and weak country in a conflict over a truly significant matter – like balking at allowing it to build a geostrategic port.

(“Countries Queuing Up to Become as Indebted to China as US,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 15, 2011)

Despite Trump’s venal appeasement at every turn, the reference to Obama should remind you of what a principled president would do. In this case, Obama would have jumped to defend not just the NBA’s economic interests but also America’s democratic values. Of course, if Trump’s supporters were still capable of any rational thought, they would wonder aloud why this “America First” president keeps putting Americans last.

Even so, I’m obliged to acknowledge two prevailing facts:

With over 600 million fans, China is fast becoming a more profitable market for the NBA than the United States.
China’s control over those fans is such that it could prevail upon them to see boycotting the NBA as a matter of national pride and sovereignty.

Incidentally, China no longer needs the military to exert that kind of control. Because the Chinese are even more afraid of running afoul of the SCS, the country’s new Social Credit System, than Americans are of running afoul of the IRS.

Still, I wish NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had tested my proposition. Because Chinese leaders are no economic Kamikazes. They are banking on Western governments and corporations continuing to pursue markets in China severally. And, divided as such, the Chinese know they can get each one to fall … in line.

On the other hand, if Western governments and corporations fully appreciated the economic and political war afoot, they would follow generally accepted best practices for investing in China. Foremost, this would mean refusing to concede or do anything that would betray democratic values.

Only together can they stand up for those values (e.g., via the TPP). And, if they ever call China’s bluff, it would fold. Because the last thing it wants is hundreds of millions of Westernized consumers wondering why being a good communist suddenly means not being able to watch Western sports (like NBA basketball), enjoy Western entertainment, or use Western products.

After all, the Faustian bargain they struck with their communist leaders long ago allows them to make all the money and enjoy all the luxuries they want, including those imported from the West. All this, so long as they stay out of politics and never utter a word of criticism about the country’s leadership. But those leaders need only look to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong to fear giving people on mainland China any cause to break that bargain.

I cannot overstate that China would hurt itself most if it closed markets to Western corporations. Hell, just losing access to the intellectual property these corporations are obliged to share (i.e., when Chinese spies aren’t stealing them) would destabilize China’s economy. But, alas, the only thing Westerners are giving Chinese leaders to fear is fear itself.

Nothing demonstrated this quite like Silver trying to distance the NBA from that innocuous tweet. Granted, he must have felt like Samwell Tarly’s father Randyll with Daenerys’s dragon Drogon circling overhead, daring him to make one bad move. Not to mention the parental concern he must have felt having the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers, two of the NBA’s marquee teams, in China at the time for pre-season exhibition games.

Unfortunately, Silver only compounded his fecklessness when he tried to stand up for democratic values after viral backlash. And Rockets superstars James Harden and Michael Westbrook made a mockery of America’s vaunted reputation as champions of democratic freedoms when they acted like glorified hostages. Only this explains their deaf, dumb, and mute response when the media questioned them about China censoring the free speech of Americans … back home.

Except that, when Lakers superstar LeBron James finally spoke, he showed why playing deaf, dumb, and mute might have been the smart thing to do.

‘I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand, and he spoke,’ James said, referring to Morey. ‘So many people could have been harmed, not only financially, but physically, emotionally, spiritually.’

(The New York Times, October 14, 2019)

Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid! And you probably thought, given the moral arc of the Civil Rights Movement, that black Americans would never sellout democratic freedoms for cash the way white Americans have always done. But frankly, I haven’t heard any public figure say anything that craven, venal, and ignorant, well, since last weekend. That’s when President Trump said he abandoned America’s Kurdish allies because they did not help the United States defeat Germany in WWII.

No doubt this political endorsement will increase the value of LeBron’s brand in China by tens of millions. I just hope it makes his brand so toxic in the United States that he becomes an even greater pariah to corporate sponsors than Colin Kaepernick is to NFL owners. Whatever the case, LeBron henceforth should have no greater credibility to talk about social justice than Trump has to tweet about racial justice.

Mind you, my commentaries on the protests in Hong Kong make clear that I think supporting these Hong Kongers is tantamount to supporting Texans who want to secede from the United States. But I would not hesitate to defend not just the right of Hong Kongers to protest but that of anyone (like Morey) to express support for them.

Meanwhile, Chinese leaders have the entire sports industry so spooked that ESPN warned its TV commentators to steer clear of any reference to China. But, true to form, Trump turned this battle between commercial profits and democratic values into a farce. Because, while shamefully avoiding any criticism of China’s extraterritorial censorship, he projected his own fecklessness onto NBA coach Steve Kerr:

So funny to watch Steve Kerr grovel and pander when asked a simple question about China. He chocked [sic], and looks weak and pathetic. Don’t want him at the White House!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2019

This tweet is even weaker and more pathetic than you might realize. Because it also betrays a puerile resentment Trump is harboring. It stems from Kerr’s decision to lead the Golden State Warriors, the 2018 NBA Championship team, in snubbing the White House invitation presidents now offer most championship teams.

The Warriors then poured salt in Trump’s wounded pride by making a viral show of visiting former President Barack Obama at his private DC office instead. But I digress …

The point is that Chinese leaders can be forgiven their totalitarian presumptions. After all, even the mighty Americans are allowing them to get away with censoring speech not only in China but in America too.

To be fair, though, there’s nothing new about US presidents and corporations sacrificing democratic values for commercial profits. Here, for example, is how I damned this trade off nearly 15 years ago in “Yahoo Becomes China’s Most-Favored Thought Police,” September 12, 2005:

How odious and hypocritical that American corporations – after exploiting democratic freedoms to make their names and untold fortunes – are now collaborating with a totalitarian regime to deny people in the most populous country on earth similar democratic freedoms.

And here is how I damned former President George W. Bush and the entire tech industry in “Google Adopts the Bush Administration’s Motto of Moral Relativism,” January 26, 2006:

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Google [followed] the compromised path into the Chinese market, which Microsoft, Yahoo, and other tech companies had already blazed. Like them, Google agreed to help China’s totalitarian government spy on and censor its citizens’ use of the Internet in exchange for market access.

The headline for this latest example of corporate hypocrisy should read, ‘Google enters China but leaves its conscience back home.’ …

Google was the last bastion of corporate conscience in this brave new world of technology. And, it solemnized our faith in its corporate motto – ‘Don’t be evil’ – when it refused China’s previous censorship demands. Therefore, we are constrained to wonder if the googleaires have now decided that it’s better to be evil and filthy rich, than to be good and just super rich. …

How can Google distinguish itself from the Bush Administration it defied just days ago and that is now universally reviled for, among other things, declaring moral aversion to torture in America whilst renditioning prisoners to be tortured in foreign countries? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! …

Clearly, Google and the Bush Administration have embraced the moral relativism that allows them to engage in activities abroad that they condemn as morally repugnant at home. But there’s no reason why the rest of us should abide this dystopian doublethink.

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Regrettably, the moral outrage I expressed back then seems quaint these days. Because, where there’s conflict anywhere between championing democratic values and gaining access to markets, Western governments and corporations alike invariably shun the latter for the former. Indeed, like Google, Apple is continually tailoring its products to help China control its citizens. Just weeks ago, it removed apps that Hong Kong protesters were using to evade police crackdowns.

Ironically, this partly explains why China is replacing the United States as the greatest economic power in the history of the world. Ominously, while doing so, China is also replacing democratic values with totalitarian tactics … even in the United States.

And this kowtowing to China is happening only because American leaders do not have nearly as much regard for democracy as Chinese leaders have for totalitarianism. If these Americans did, they would tell the Chinese to go pound sand, reminding them that their businesses were already unconscionably profitable when China was still little more than the backward hermit kingdom North Korea is today.