NBA Star, Chinese Slave
Two interesting stories have come out of China this week, but have generated little interest. The bigger story of the two is the Milwaukee Bucks trying to sign Yi Jianlian, whose agent and teams from China are demanding a trade. The official reason given by the Chinese government is that they only want him to sign with a team that will give him maximum playing time so that he can improve his game immediately. Sounds great doesn’t it? But wait, they want this to happen in order to strengthen the Chinese national team.
The second story, that has received very little attention, is China’s official sports federation publicly criticizing Yao Ming for reporting late for national team training. On the face of it that sounds like a legitimate complaint. If someone shows up late to work that is considered irresponsible. When you look further and see that the federation has also criticized him for spending too much time planning his wedding and making appearances for the Special Olympics and 2008 Beijing Olympic Games it makes shows the mindset there.
“No matter how lofty public welfare activities are, they can’t be allowed to take first place in a player’s life,” says the China Sports Daily, a federation-owned newspaper. It also goes on to say, “No matter how sweet personal life is, it can’t be compared to the exultation of capturing glory for one’s nation.”
The fact that these men are being treated as property of the government is appalling. I understand that China is a communist government and that is the nature of things, but why is nobody else bothered by this? The stories on Yi only talk about the basketball aspect of the trade demands. We live in a country where an uproar will occur when an athlete says the wrong thing and hurts someone’s feelings. Yet these men are being treated as slaves, but as long as we enjoy watching them play it’s OK. I’m assuming that, because they’re being paid millions, that makes it different.
