I write about China. I love basketball. There was no way I was going to be able to avoid getting sucked into the Linsanity. He almost makes me forget how much I hate the Knicks.
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Down in the antipode this week, an international scuffle broke out and it had nothing to do with the criminally atrocious officiating last night in both the Germany/Serbia and US/Slovenia matches…* Russel Norman, MP and leader of the New Zealand Green Party, marked the arrival of Chinese heir-to-be-but-we’re-still-not-telling-anybody-officially-yet Xi Jinping to Wellington by waving a Τibetan flag and calling for Τibet’s independence. A tacky move I’ll grant you, and one that probably would have rated a mention on page 23 of the Dominion Post (right after the rugby scores) if the Chinese security forces had the sense the Good Lord gave to a drunken kakapo.** Lest the very sight of the Τibetan colors mortally wound the delicate sensitivities of CHTBBWSNTAOY, Xi Jinping’s security detail harassed the MP with the Chinese counterintelligence weapons of today (the umbrella) and yesterday (a good old fashioned elbow in the ribs). Mr. Norman wishes to press charges. Good luck with that. The WSJ has a roundup of the mini-fracas and the international fallout which ends on a point I’ve made in this space not a few times. In trying to “manage” situations which have a potential to be embarrassing for the Party or the PRC, Chinese officials James Montague and Jaime FlorCruz have a feature piece up on CNN.com on the state of soccer (sorry, football) in China. It details the trials and tribulations of establishing a professional league in the PRC and FIFA’s hopes to tap into China’s legions of soccer fans in the face of corruption and match fixing. The whole piece is worth a read, especially for sports fans, but author Rowan Simons makes a point which bridges the gap between the world of athletic competition and the ills which face Chinese society as a whole: “The CSL was already the third attempt at setting up the league because the other two collapsed due to corruption and fan violence,” Rowan Simons, author of Bamboo Goalposts, a recent book about soccer in China, told CNN. “There’s corruption at every single level of the game, from the top to the very bottom. It’s an indictment of wider Chinese society and representative of a much bigger problem with corruption and nepotism. It’s more visible with football because your results are taken by your performance in international competition. So there is nowhere to hide. They are 85th in FIFA’s world rankings with a population of over a billion I want to come clean: I am a Red Sox fenqing. Mao may have had his Red Guards but I’m a card-carrying armband-wearing brainless slogan-chanting member of the 红袜兵.* Hey, we’ve got our catchy songs and marching anthem too. You have a problem with that? Didn’t think so, because there’s a bleacher full of guys behind me who will find your ass, pull you out of your seat and get all Dropkick Murphys on you… You can hold me down, prop open my eyelids with rusty nails and make me watch video of David Ortiz plunging needles into his body like he’s filming the last 15 seconds of Kurt Cobain: The Movie and I still won’t believe that Papi was juiced on steroids even though he went from hitting 20 home runs a year with Twins to bashing 50 home runs only after joining the Red Sox and making the acquaintance of one Manuel Ramirez. The cover of Sports Illustrated with Nomar Garciaparra that caused every red blooded New England male to question their sexuality for .000001 seconds? Yeah, nothing going on there. Oh sure…right AFTER steroids became a big deal Nomar started breaking down like a decade-old Xiali, but Another week another column for The Global Times. (And in case you’re wondering, my soul feels no less decayed than usual.) This one is on basketball with a little foreign relations thrown in by way of metaphor. Enjoy. |
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