Silencing the crowd: China, the NBA, and leveraging market size to export censorship

Abstract

While censorship within China has been a longstanding phenomenon, efforts to suppress information and to reshape perception of China abroad have become increasingly widespread and sophisticated. Recently, this trend has manifested through several high-profile incidents of foreign firms censoring controversial content outside of China in order to retain access to the Chinese consumer market. This article argues that China is uniquely situated to leverage this type of market power due to its enormous, growing consumer base and authoritarian structure. This form of ‘exporting’ censorship can occur in three ways: content bans, position reversal, and self-censorship. Outward-facing firms, especially in the entertainment industry, are particularly vulnerable to this type of pressure as their employees, including actors, athletes, and celebrity CEOs, may have an independent following and audience for their personal views. By analyzing the controversy between China and the National Basketball Association over a single tweet in support of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, this article demonstrates the conditions under which censorship efforts may be outsourced to private, foreign actors in jurisdictions outside of China.