Short answers, pulled from the story.
Basketball arrived in China in 1895 when the Young Men's Christian Association established its first Chinese office in Tianjin, just four years after the sport was invented at Spring Field College in Massachusetts. The game spread quickly and featured in the National Games of 1910 and 1914. By 1935, Chinese citizens had voted basketball one of the country's two official national sports, alongside ping pong.
Yao Ming was drafted by the Houston Rockets in 2002 as the first international player ever selected first overall in the NBA draft. His arrival triggered a rapid expansion of NBA television coverage in China and a sharp spike in viewership. When Yao and Yi Jianlian faced each other in 2007, the game was broadcast on 13 Chinese outlets to an audience of 200 million viewers.
The Washington Bullets were the first NBA team to play in China, competing in two exhibition games on the 24th of August 1979 against the Chinese national team and the Bayi Rockets. In 2004, the Houston Rockets played two preseason games in China, making the NBA the first American professional sports league to compete in the country.
On the 4th of October 2019, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted a tweet supporting Hong Kong protesters and calling for withdrawal of the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill. The Chinese Basketball Association halted cooperation with the Rockets, and companies including Vivo, CCTV, and Tencent suspended all NBA operations. Commissioner Adam Silver stated that losses from the dispute could reach $400 million.
In 2020, roughly 625 million people in China identified as basketball fans, a number that exceeds the entire population of the United States. Of those, 143 million were considered hardcore fans who regularly watched and played the game, and 482 million were classified as general fans.
NBA China was established in January 2008 to manage all of the league's business across the greater China region, including television rights, merchandising, and marketing. The organisation is estimated to be worth more than $4 billion and operates from offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. In 2008, a group of investors including ESPN, Bank of China Group Investment, and the Li Ka Shing Foundation paid $253 million for an 11% stake in the organisation.