Basketball in China

• 1. Introduction

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  Basketball in China claimed the loyalty of 22% of the country's population by 2022. In survey after survey, more Chinese people named basketball their favourite sport than any other game, including association football. The NBA became more popular in China than the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA Champions League, and the Premier League.

  The sport arrived not through government programme or commercial deal but through a Christian youth organisation. That organisation opened its first Chinese office in Tianjin in 1895. By 1935, Chinese citizens had voted basketball one of the country's two official national sports, alongside ping pong.

  What drove its rise from a foreign import to a national passion? Who built the commercial machinery that turned an American professional league into China's favourite sports brand? And what happens when sports collide with geopolitics at a billion-dollar scale?

• 2. Roots of the Game

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  The First Far Eastern Championship Games of 1913, held in Manila, brought China into international basketball competition alongside Japan and the Philippines.

  Basketball was barely four years old when it came to China. The original game had been played at Spring Field College, a YMCA Training School in Massachusetts. The sport required little equipment and spread quickly.

  The YMCA took on much of the preparation for the National Games of 1910 and 1914. The late Qing Dynasty's institutional weakening had left the organisation filling administrative gaps that the state could no longer manage.

  After the People's Republic of China formed in 1949, the government used sport as a diplomatic tool. Chinese teams competed against Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania within the socialist bloc. By 1959, those travels had reached Switzerland and France. Trips to the United States followed in the 1970s, enabled by the opening created by ping-pong diplomacy. At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, the Chinese women's basketball team won a bronze medal, defeating Canada. Between 1975 and 2005, the Chinese men's national team won 16 titles at the FIBA Asia Cup.

  The country's military had also embraced the game in the 1950s. The People's Liberation Army, which counted more than two million active members, was encouraged to play basketball to build teamwork and unity. Its players promoted slogans such as "Friendship First, Competition Second." One prominent military team, the Bayi Rockets, would eventually produce Wang Zhizhi, the first Chinese player to compete in the NBA.

• 3. The NBA Arrives

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  On the 24th of August 1979, the team then called the Washington Bullets became the first NBA franchise invited to China. Two exhibition games were played: one against the Chinese national team, and one against the Bayi Rockets. Basketball had been played in China for decades by that point. Yet these games were the country's first formal encounter with the NBA as an institution.

  NBA commissioner David Stern deepened the connection in the 1980s. He signed a deal with China Central Television, known as CCTV, giving the broadcaster the right to air NBA games at no cost. Chinese state media began airing the games regularly. The broadcasts arrived during the peak years of players like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson.

  The audience that formed around those broadcasts was striking. More than 450 million people in China eventually counted themselves as NBA fans. The single greatest driver of growth within that base had not yet entered the league.

• 4. Yao Ming and the Surge

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  Yao Ming stood 7 feet 6 inches tall and grew up in Shanghai. In 2002, the Houston Rockets made him the first international player ever selected with the top pick in the NBA draft. His arrival in Houston immediately changed the landscape of NBA viewership in China.

  Chinese television stations rapidly expanded their coverage after Yao's selection, and viewership figures spiked. In 2004, the NBA staged two Houston Rockets preseason games on Chinese soil. That made the NBA the first American professional sports league to compete in China, arriving just two years after Yao joined the league.

  Yi Jianlian joined the Milwaukee Bucks in 2007, after playing in the Chinese Basketball Association. When Yao and Yi faced each other that year, the game went out on 13 Chinese television outlets. Total viewership for that single match reached 200 million people.

• 5. The Domestic Game

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  The Chinese Basketball Association was established in 1995 as the country's national professional basketball league. It operates 20 teams divided between a Northern Division and a Southern Division. The Women's Chinese Basketball Association, known as the WCBA, was established under the CBA in 2002 and fields 17 teams.

  Both leagues attracted significant foreign talent. The CBA drew NBA veterans and All-Stars including Metta World Peace, Stephon Marbury, Gilbert Arenas, Tracy McGrady, and Steve Francis. Others who played in the CBA include Jeremy Lin, Aaron Brooks, Jimmer Fredette, Michael Beasley, and Kenyon Martin. The WCBA brought in players from the WNBA including Crystal Langhorne, Stefanie Dolson, and Candace Parker.

  The Wukesong Arena in Beijing, also known as the Cadillac Center, was originally constructed for the basketball events of the 2008 Summer Olympics. In Shanghai, the Mercedes-Benz Arena stands on the former grounds of Expo 2010 in the Pudong district, and was previously called the Shanghai World Expo Cultural Center.

  In the 2015-16 CBA season, the league averaged 4,710 spectators per game. The Flying Leopard club led all teams with an average of 7,124 fans per match. The audiences filling those arenas were also tracking the game through a rapidly expanding network of digital platforms.

• 6. NBA China: The Business

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  NBA China was established in January 2008 to manage all of the league's commercial activity in the region. The organisation is estimated to be worth more than $4 billion. It is headquartered in Beijing and operates additional offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei, with more than 115 employees across all four locations.

  The initial funding round, also completed in 2008, raised $253 million. The investors included ESPN, a Walt Disney Company division, and Bank of China Group Investment. Legend Holdings Limited, the parent company of PC maker Lenovo, also participated. So did the Li Ka Shing Foundation and China Merchants Investments, an affiliate of China Merchants Bank. In exchange, the group received an 11% stake in the preference shares of NBA China.

  Tim Chen became the first chief executive of NBA China in mid-October 2008. He had previously served as CEO of Microsoft Greater China, where he spent four years cultivating relationships with Chinese regulators and persuading government bodies to purchase licensed software. In May 2020, Michael Ma took over as CEO from Derek Chang. Ma holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a degree in mathematics from Rutgers University, and he had played a central role in launching NBA China in 2008.

  The NBA's Douyin account, the platform known internationally as TikTok, accumulated more than 12.3 million followers and 410 million likes. That following made the NBA the most-followed sports league in China on Douyin. On Weibo, a platform similar to Twitter, the NBA drew over 44 million followers. The NBA's WeChat account reached approximately 1.4 million followers.

  In November 2011, NBA China and Dongguan New Century launched the CBA Dongguan Basketball School for players aged 12 to 17. In February 2014, Yao Ming joined NBA China to open Beijing's first afterschool basketball programme. By October 2014, the NBA and China's Ministry of Education had announced a multi-year partnership to integrate basketball and fitness into school curricula across the country. In October 2016, the NBA announced the opening of new academies in Urumqi, Jinan, and Hangzhou. Those academies were still taking in students when the most damaging period in NBA China's history arrived three years later.

• 7. Trouble on the Court

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  At the 2001 Asian Basketball Championship, a fight broke out between China and Lebanon after the game ended. Fans threw objects at Lebanese players, leaving several injured before police restored order.

  In August 2005, during a game between China and Puerto Rico in Beijing, two Chinese players charged the Puerto Rican bench at the end of play. Their names were Li Nan and Mo Ke. A Puerto Rican center, Manuel Narvaez, had fouled Yi Jianlian hard, triggering the attack. An estimated 3,000 spectators threw objects at the visiting team. Puerto Rican players tried to reach the locker room as the objects fell. Coverage of the night described it as a "night of shame."

  In October 2010, China and Brazil played a friendly warm-up game in Xuchang, Henan Province. Fighting broke out just 66 seconds in. Players from both sides exchanged kicks and punches, and the match ended immediately. As the Brazilian team headed toward the locker room, a second round of violence erupted. The Chinese Basketball Association apologised, suspended players and coaches, and required Chinese players to attend sportsmanship classes before the Asian Games.

  On the 18th of August 2011, an exhibition game between the Bayi Rockets and the Georgetown Hoyas ended in a brawl as the Hoyas were leaving the court. A Georgetown fan was struck by a thrown bottle. The captains of both teams met the following Sunday and exchanged autographed basketballs. The Chinese Basketball Association would face its most serious crisis not from violence in an arena but from a single post on social media.

• 8. A Tweet and $400 Million

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  China hosted the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup. On the 4th of October of that year, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, posted a tweet. He deleted it within hours. The image in the tweet supported Hong Kong protesters and called for withdrawal of the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill.

  On the 5th of October, Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta stated publicly that the tweet reflected Morey's personal view. It did not represent the position of the NBA or the team. Morey apologised. On the 6th of October, the Chinese Basketball Association halted all cooperation with the Houston Rockets. That same day, the NBA issued a public statement apologising on Morey's behalf, while noting that the league does not regulate what players, coaches, and staff say outside the game.

  On the 7th of October, American politicians including Ted Cruz, Andrew Yang, and Julian Castro publicly supported Morey's tweet and criticised the NBA for apologising. Companies including Vivo, the state broadcaster CCTV, and Tencent suspended all operations with the NBA. Adam Silver, the league's commissioner, stated that losses from the dispute could reach $400 million. CCTV specifically halted broadcasts of Houston Rockets games.

  The relationship began to recover in 2021, when NBA games returned to CCTV's networks. By 2025, the NBA staged games in the region again, with the Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns playing two matches in Macau. The Brooklyn Nets are owned by Joe Tsai, a billionaire who co-founded Alibaba. Tencent holds the distribution rights for NBA games in China through 2027.