Last night I had a meeting with Americans and didn’t get to sleep until 4 or 5 in the morning. Right after I woke up, I saw Morey’s tweet and that Woj had liked it and felt really sorry and angry! Morey writes his own tweets and I have no doubt Woj is responsible for his own twitter as well. I am quite familiar with both of these men, especially Morey; from the summer of 2015 until early 2019, I managed Morey’s Chinese-language Weibo and posted all of his content including text, pictures, comments, answers etc. He would email all of this content to me. He was quite clear on what he could and could not say and was always very cautious. Furthermore, after Woj joined ESPN and became my colleague we started working together to develop a show for the Chinese market. Although after the show officially went online I no longer had anything to do with it, I was always quite clear as to the nature of his personality. These two men are the absolute cream of the crop of American society. Because they have been in the sports world for so long, they have a huge amount of influence. Thanks to the nature of their jobs they have developed extremely meticulous and cautious work habits. They know that there are certain things they could say that could hugely impact operations and have a disastrous impact on their career. Therefore, if I start to hear explanations like “I was hacked”; “I liked that by accident”; “That’s not what I meant by that” etc. I will absolutely not believe them.
As someone who worked in America for 10 years, including 3 years at ESPN, I can say with certainty to you all that there are quite a lot of people in America – people from the elite — who have the same views as Morey and Woj. However, they don’t express these views because America has a very stringent culture of political correctness. Any opinions you express about black people, minorities, women etc. can have very serious consequences. Although some people like to brag about America’s freedom of speech, there’s a lot of topics that are actually quite tightly censored – if you say one thing that goes against the politically correct line, you will immediately lose your job and be scorned by the entire population. In fact, freedom of speech has never been about saying whatever you want. Speech has always had to comply with the country’s laws, culture and customs. Therefore, although so many Americans are taught from a young age that Taiwan is its own country, that Hong Kong, Macau and Tibet should split off, there’s a certain group of Americans – especially very high-class ones who do business with China – who won’t say these things, express these things, tweet these things, “like” these things because they maintain a modicum of respect for China and they are not willing to complicated matters and lose business for the sake of things that have nothing to do with them.
In America, individual rights and values are accorded with great importance, but it’s also true that individuals have a very tight relationship with their workplace, and the views of individuals represent the views of their workplace – especially those very high profile individuals. When it comes to large international organizations like the NBA, the Rockets, ESPN etc, there are very stringent internal requirements and regulations regarding what employees can and can not say externally. In the age of social media, any “like” can represent an individual and their company. In the event an individual exhibits problems, the company should absolutely stand up to express the company’s position, and then punish that individual accordingly.
I reckon the Rockets’ boss never thought Morey would suddenly come out with a statement like this. And aside from the China department, I don’t ESPN would ever have found this to be a problem.
The reason Morey invests his own money hiring a company to manage his Weibo is not for the sake of the Rockets, but so that he can raise his own profile in China. Every month, he pays more than a 1000 US dollars to Mailman [Shanghai sports media localization company] to manage his Weibo. Woj, meanwhile, has since last year been hosting the Chinese market-facing program “Woj in the House.” Woj and ESPN very much hope that can leverage Woj’s strong personal brand to open up new market opportunities in China and make even more money, to the extent they are considering applying to trademark this four character phrase [wo shen lai le 沃神来了; Chinese name for the show. WoShen 沃神 is Wojnarowski’s Chinese name; literally means something like “Wo God”]
As for the Rockets and ESPN (Woj’s employer, these are both outstanding examples of sports companies that make money in China. The Rockets, after all are the NBA’s “China team.” Countless Chinese sponsors bring them millions of US dollars in sponsorship money every year; after so many years I can’t how much money they’ve made. ESPN, meanwhile, has over the past four years reaped a stable income from the Chinese market, at least 15 million US dollars. Of course, Teacher Yang [Yang Yi, famous Chinese basketball commentator] has already pointed this out.
If you want to become even more popular, make even more money – no problem. But if you have to understand that China is not a country of moneyed idiots. You have to understand, in this world, there is only one China.
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