China's state-run TV announced Tuesday that it will "suspend" the broadcast of NBA exhibition games in China, the latest rebound after a controversial tweet by a Houston Rockets leader about Hong Kong protesters.
The crisis began Friday when Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Texas basketball franchise, posted on Twitter a call for support for protests in the Chinese Autonomous Region of Hong Kong, which demand, sometimes with violence, more freedoms. China, very sensitive on issues of sovereignty, had reacted immediately. The CCTV public television announced that it would not broadcast the club's matches and local sponsors threatened to sever ties with it.
The boss of the NBA, Adam Silver, lamented Monday with the Japanese agency Kyodo News a tweet with "rather dramatic consequences". "I want to point out that Daryl Morey is supported as to his right to exercise his freedom of expression," he said.
"Anything that calls into question national sovereignty does not enter the field of freedom of expression"
It is these last remarks, far from the excuses expected by Beijing, which motivated the last decision of the television CCTV. "We express our deep dissatisfaction and deep opposition to Adam Silver's use of the freedom of expression pretext to support Daryl Morey," the channel said. "We believe that anything that calls into question national sovereignty and social stability does not fall within the scope of freedom of expression," she said on the Weibo social network.
"For this reason, the CCTV sports channel (...) has decided to immediately suspend the broadcast of NBA preseason matches scheduled in China and immediately launch an investigation into all our cooperation and all our exchanges involving the NBA." The Chinese television was supposed to broadcast two exhibition meetings between the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers teams, scheduled for Thursday in Shanghai and Saturday in Shenzhen.