HOW FAR IS AMERICAN WILLING TO GO TO GET ACCESS TO CHINESE MARKETS?

     
      On October 12, 2019, The New York Times contained an article named "Politics and Sports Shouldn't Mix? They've Always Mixed." It's a story about how, over the past week, the National Basketball Association has been caught in a pickle. The general manager of the Houston Rockets sent out a tweet expressing support for the protestors in Hong Kong. The Chinese government was offended about this statement and threatened to make it harder for the NBA to promote basketball in the land of 1.4 billion potential customers. The head of the NBA released two statements, one in English and one in Mandarin Chinese. The problem was that the Mandarin statement was a lot more apologetic than the English. Some people criticized the NBA, saying the Houston general manager had every right to express his thought. Other people said supported the NBA by saying you can't ignore getting access to country with the biggest population in the world. 

     This is just the latest in the debate about how far is America willing to go to get access to Chinese markets. The American Conservative website posted an October 4, 2019 article by Pat Buchanan (who ran twice for the Republican presidential nomination) titled, "American Blunder: Throwing Open Our Markets to China," which argued that America has made three big mistakes in the past 60 years--one being that America has been too eager to do business with China. Buchanan wrote, "The third (mistake) was to throw open America's markets to Chinese goods on favorable terms, which led to the enrichment and empowerment of a regime whose long-term threat to U.S. interests and values is as great as was that of the Soviet Union during the Cold War" (Buchanan para 19). My sense is that Buchanan would strongly disagree with the NBA apologizing to the Chinese government and people in order to keep those markets open. 

     On the other hand, antiwar.com posted an article that took an opposite position. In a July 2, 2019 article by Doug Bandow, titled, "Blame America Too for Our Ruptured Relations With the Chinese," Bandow admitted that China had made many mistakes such as having aggressive threats towards other countries and keeping too much control over its society. However, Bandow wrote that the United States had made mistakes too in our relationship with China. He expressed a strong desire to have largely open markets between the US and China, writing, "Trade benefits both parties and is best kept free rather than excessively managed. Washington must decide what issues are broadly essential to our commercial relationship, especially given legitimate security concerns." I anticipate that Bandow would understand and agree with the NBA's wish to sell more satellite packages and jerseys to pro basketball fans in China, even if that meant dealing with a government that was being strongly protested in Hong Kong.

     So, in the end, will America play ball with China, or will we cancel the game?