[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 163 (Wednesday, October 16, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5825-S5826]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Hong Kong
Mr. COTTON. Madam President, as we speak, the brave people of Hong
Kong are demonstrating to protect their freedoms from the Chinese
Communist Party in Beijing. Chinese state TV has portrayed these
millions of demonstrators as violent anarchists and separatists, but
these Hongkongers are merely insisting that China live up to the
promises it made to Hong Kong and the United Kingdom--promises China
made as binding conditions of the transfer of sovereignty from London
to Beijing.
The Chinese Government promised that Hong Kong would enjoy a high
degree of autonomy, including many of the freedoms that Beijing denies
to its more than 1 billion subjects on the mainland, but, as the world
has learned through bitter experience, the Chinese Communist Party's
promises aren't worth the paper they are written on. Slowly but surely,
Beijing has chipped away at the independence it promised Hong Kong--
disappearing citizens guilty of wrongthink, undermining Hong Kong's
longstanding political and judicial systems, and issuing menacing
threats of military intervention to crush the demonstrations.
Most Americans are rightly outraged by China's brutal crackdown in
Hong Kong. Daryl Morey is one of them. He is the general manager of the
Houston Rockets. Just a few days ago, he tweeted a simple and justified
phrase: ``Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.''
Morey probably knew his words would offend the Chinese Communist
Party, but he was also violating a different party line--that of his
own league, the NBA. For daring to speak up about Hong Kong, Morey was
disavowed by his team, his fellow executives, and some of the most
famous
[[Page S5826]]
athletes in the NBA. That is because he was threatening not only the
powers that be in China but the cash cow that China represents for
American business, including professional basketball. China's
government may be red, but its money is green, and plenty of people are
willing to cash its checks, no matter the cost.
The league's biggest star, LeBron James, said that Morey's support
for Hong Kong was ``misinformed'' and ``not educated.'' He reportedly
called for Morey to be punished. Perhaps it is no coincidence that
LeBron James stands to make billions of dollars from the Chinese
market--not only from a higher NBA salary cap, shoe sales, and Nike
ads, but also from his own movie company. Often known as King James,
perhaps ``Chairman LeBron'' would be a better honorific today.
Joe Tsai, owner of the Brooklyn Nets, called the protest in Hong Kong
a separatist movement that was trying to carve up Chinese territories
like colonial powers or Imperial Japan. Perhaps it is no coincidence
that Mr. Tsai is an executive at Alibaba, a Chinese company that
developed a Communist propaganda app that hijacked cell phones of
anyone who downloaded it.
At a Wizards game last week, security confiscated a protest sign that
said simply ``Google Uighurs,'' referring to the native people of
western China whose culture and religion are being exterminated by the
Chinese Communist Party. That sign was not confiscated in China by the
secret police but right here in America's national capital.
Steve Kerr, the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, drew a moral
equivalence between Communist China and the United States. ``None of us
are perfect,'' he said, ``and we all have different issues we need to
get to.''
Nobody is perfect. That is what he says of an authoritarian regime
that starved, shot, or beat to death 50 million of its own people on a
forced march to modernity and a regime that runs a network of
concentration camps in its western provinces and harvests the organs of
political prisoners for its own pampered elite. Nobody is perfect,
indeed.
This is craven and greedy behavior, and it stands in stark contrast
to how America has historically used sports to promote our interests
and our aspirations, from the triumph of Black Olympians in Hitler's
Germany to the Miracle on Ice against the Soviet Union. Even our
diplomatic opening to China happened in part through sports with ping-
pong diplomacy.
Today, the tables have turned. China has used sports to export its
authoritarian model to our soil. So far, it has found too many willing
enforcers in the NBA. But it doesn't have to be this way. Commissioner
Adam Silver, after a slow start, defended Daryl Morey's right to speak
his mind about Hong Kong. He said: Free expression is ``what you guys
stand for.''
Too many American companies kowtow to China not because they love its
government but because of the tremendous pressure that government can
exert on their operations. But the NBA is in a unique position. Beijing
can ban an airline, or it can ban a hotel that lists Taiwan as a
country in its online drop-down menu, and the Chinese people can use a
different airline, or they can use a different hotel, but there is only
one NBA. Beijing can't create another one.
And here is the rub: There are more than 500 million basketball fans
in China. More people in China follow the NBA than there are people in
the United States. No doubt Beijing has some leverage over the NBA, as
it does over all businesses, but the NBA has a lot of leverage over
Beijing. Is Beijing really going to ban the entire league, as they have
done with the Houston Rockets, at the risk of alienating more than 500
million people who follow the league and the resultant public backlash
that could create? So instead of acting as a bullhorn for Communist
propaganda in America, the NBA could be a beacon of freedom in China.
They could dare China to shut them out.
Let me urge all of these NBA executives and players who say they care
about social justice, don't just speak out when the stakes are low for
you personally or when the cause is popular among your friends; speak
out now when the stakes are deadly high for millions of Hongkongers and
more than a billion Chinese, including so many of your fans.
LeBron James tweeted not long ago: ``Injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere.'' Live out that principle consistently. There
are a million Uighurs in concentration camps yearning to hear a
champion who speaks out on their behalf, particularly since the NBA
runs an elite training academy in proximity to those camps.
Steve Kerr never held back on expressing his opinion about our
President. That is fine. That is his right as an American. But how
about some outrage for the authoritarian regime in Beijing?
Joe Tsai was born in Taiwan. His fellow Taiwanese live in constant
fear of meddling, attack, and subjugation by the Chinese Communist
party. Are they separatists for wanting to maintain their way of life?
Speak out proudly on behalf of your homeland about the true nature of
the government in Beijing.
I realize it is a hard thing to ask any person. No doubt this is a
harder path than the path many in the NBA are traveling at present. It
would require sacrifice, and it would certainly invite the wrath of the
Chinese Communist Party. But if the league used its unique leverage for
freedom, millions of ordinary Chinese would surely notice, despite an
army of Chinese Communist censors arrayed against them.
The NBA didn't pick this fight. It probably prefers to avoid this
fight. The Chinese Communist Party wants this fight. So the choice
isn't to fight or not; it is to win or lose. And perhaps alone among
American businesses, the NBA has a shot to win against Beijing. And in
any fight against Communists, there can only be one strategy and one
policy: victory.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.