Slam Dunking in Beijing

8/8/2019 Slam Dunking in Beijing

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SlamDunking

in BeijingHow Americas National

Basketball Association used Global

Media Networks to Serve Ping-

Pong and become Chinas

Favorite Sport

// by Zachary McCune


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he extraordinary popularity o basketball and Americas National Basketball As-sociation in China today oers a dramatic example o global media transormingand supplanting local culture. In just twenty years, the sport has gone rom relativeobscurity in China to a sport played and ollowed by millions. Tis exceptional growth isclosely attached to the development o media in China and the conscious capitalizationo global media networks by the National Basketball Association (NBA). oday, NBAgames are broadcast live rom the US by Chinese national broadcaster Chinese Central V(CCV ) and the NBA has relationships with 51 other Chinese telecasters. Moreover, theNBA has created an organization, NBA China, to explicitly develop and maintain its mediamarket in the country. Teir website, NBA.com/China has become the most popular sportswebsite in the country. Cutting against history itsel, basketball has dethroned ping-pongas the sport o choice among young people and China in general. Te politics and culturalidentities o ping-pong diplomacy in the cold war are ading with the rise o globalizationand its media networks. Te new China, it would seem, plays and watches basketball, evenwhen the game is being played on the other side o the world.

racking the development o basketball and the NBA in China requires a great deal ohistorical and theoretical contexts. In order to ask and answer the question o how this sportwas popularized through media, particularly global media networks, this paper will look attheories o the global media and trace the history o media production (mostly television)in China. It will also attempt to position basketball within the larger trends and traditionso Chinese sport, particularly in the Peoples Republic o China (PRC). Tis history willreveal the importance o ping-pong in China and the ways ping-pong has been positionedas an iconic Chinese activity. Te interweaving o media and sports culture in China showshow basketball under the auspices o the NBA was consciously marketed and developed orthe Chinese market, and how it supplanted ping-pong as the athletic activity in contempo-

rary China. Tis recent development does not mean that China has been necessarily West-ernized or colonized, but rather that basketball has been in part made Chinese even as the

a new china

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Chinese take on new cultural symbols and cues rom this traditionally American pastime.

Global media networks are not new. Tis is the consensus o social theorists like JohnTompson in Te Media and Modernity, and Edward Herman and Robert McChesney

in Te Global Media. But there is something new and dramatic about the speed and easeo content transmission that contemporary global media networks allow or, and the con-sequences o those developments. As Tompson notes, the concurrent development odigital encoding, satellite transmission and extensive cable networks allowed or a consider-able expansion o media networks, including the pervasiveness o telephone lines and thebreadth o television broadcast territories. Tis is because these new distribution systemsare inherently transnational since, rom a technical point o view, there is no reason why thereception are o a satellite should correspond even roughly to the territorial boundaries oa particular nation-state (Tompson 1995: 162). Indeed, the global movement o satellitesorbiting the planet suggests the cyclical ow o content through these networks allow

or. Media messages, produced and encoded in one nation are today easily and requentlyrelayed or consumption in another.

Yet technology alone has not determined the rise and success o global media networks. Forin addition to making possible the global transmission o media content, these networkshave benetted rom the popularization o cross-cultural content. Tey have relied on andbeen dened by an asymmetry in production and consumption, with certain regions suchas the United States dominating production o content ar beyond its own consumption.As Tompson notes, many television stations in developing countries simply cannot aordto produce their own material at the quality o international alternatives (Tompson 1995:

163). Moreover, purchasing the rights to American television serials or example is an inex-pensive way to ll broadcasting schedules (Tompson 1995: 163).

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global theory


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But there is also no doubt something about the cultural cachet o international content inoreign markets that causes it to be attractive or viewers who support local media provid-ers. In a poll rom 1996, 41.5% o survey respondents rom 19 nations reported that theyconsidered American cultural are to be excellent or very good which was more thandouble the rate o any nation (Herman & McChesney 1997: 42). Te point is, a combina-tion o technological developments such as satellites, the need or cheap programming in

developing markets, and the popularity o American media products have created pathwaysor global media networks to challenge and inuence local culture. Tis is not all into theull cultural imperialism debate, but to sketch a context or considering the specic case obasketball in China within a larger global trend.

Te history o television in China begins in Beijing a decade aer the establishment o thePeoples Republic o China. Initially called Beijing elevision, the state owned and oper-ated network began black and white broadcasting in 1958 (Kang 2009: 319). As Liu Kang

writes, television, like any other orm o media and culture, was perceived by Mao [Ze-dong] to be a tool o ideological purication and political propaganda (Kang 2009: 319).Kang urther explains that while the initial adoption o V in China was dramatic, politi-cal instability during the Cultural Revolution closed all but two television stations, and itwould be until 1978 with the ormal reinvention o Beijing elevision as CCV that themedium began growth anew (Kang 2009: 319). During this time, it is understood that pro-gramming or Chinese television markets came almost completely rom within. Even whenNBA executives rst came to China to promote their game as content or CCV, they werereportedly told that Chinese television programming must bring honor to the mother-land not simply entertain (MacLeod 2006). Te suggestion was that only Chinese-madecontent could do this, and that Maos initial ideas about the use o television or China hadendured.

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tv in china


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Even today, Chinese television is largely dominated by programming made by CCV orwithin CCVs production purview. For example, every year CCV produces and broad-casts the Spring Festival Gala, an entertainment show, which is viewed by over 1 billionviewers over 90% o Chinas population (Kang 2009: 328). Tis program, broadcast liverom 8 pm to midnight on Chinese New Years Eve, has become what Daniel Dayan andElihu Katz call a media event. According to their denition, media events are broad-

casts [that] integrate societies in a collective heartbeat and evoke a renewal o loyalty to thesociety and its legitimate authority (Dayan & Katz 1992: 9). In other words, by creatingtelevision programs watched by high volumes o a population, concurrent witnessing o thismedia event becomes an important act in the lie o citizens. Te media event orientsand ocuses social attention on a single cultural act and with it, the meanings and systemsrepresented by that act. Kang acknowledges this in writing that the Spring Gala Festival hasbecome part o the Chinese New Years Eve celebrations- a new custom (Kang 2009: 328).elevision has become a sort o process in China in which the Chinese annually (re) denethemselves.

It must be said that the popularity and importance o events like the Spring Gala Festivalis directly connected to rise o television networks and television consumption. From thelimited and constrained growth o V in China in the 1960s and 1970s, later decadessaw dramatic growth, and by the middle o this decade, Chinese television viewership wasalmost ubiquitous.

A surey in 2004 put the number o teleision iewers in China at 1.2 billion. An aerage iewer watchers 3 hours o V per day, and 20 channels per day (60 minutes onational V, 48 minutes o provincial, and 70 minutes on local channels) (Kang 2009:320).

As this survey acknowledges, the rise in television viewership also corresponded a diversi-

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cation in the number o channels and providers available to choose rom. While still limitedand controlled by the Chinese government, through required approval or entry into theChinese market, many o these channels represent the sort o global opening that Tomp-sons network analysis mentions. For despite the use o names like national provincialand local the content o channels is not necessarily produced exclusively or that rame-work or within it. Instead, these levels demarcate sorts o spheres o inuence with the na-tional level occupied by CCV, and the provincial/local levels lled by growingly smallerbroadcasters. Foreign programming can and is broadcast at all o these levels, as demand orinternational content has grown, and the economics o buying rather than making contentcomes into play.

Alongside the development o television is the concurrent but not exactly parallel devel-opment o modern Chinese sports. Chinese reormers, revolutionaries and scholars alikehistorically evaluated China as lacking an ancient (read Western) competitive sports cul-ture. Scholar Susan Brownell has written that sinologists like Herbert Giles as well as Chi-

nese leaders like Mao Zedong equated ancient Chinese civilization with a culture o themind that orcibly ignored the body (Brownell 2009: 340). Te perceived consequenceso this ignorance was that Chinese intellect developed while its martial/physical prowessatrophied, an idea that supported and inormed the characterization o early 20th centuryChina as the sick man o east Asia. Motivated directly by this perceived discrepancy, Maosrst published piece o writing was an essay titled A Study o Physical Culture and when herose to power he proclaimed Develop physical culture and sports, strengthen the peoplesphysiques (Brownell 2009: 341, 344). Both o these actions oreground the importanceo sport or Maos idea o a modern China, ideas which would be put into practice throughpolicy, acility construction, and education. As Brownell succinctly summarizes sports

became a key symbol in Chinas quest or modernity (Brownell 2009: 343).

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sport in modern china


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Selecting the sports that modern China would play proved to be a telling example o itsinterest in competing outside o China with internationally accepted activities. For thesports Mao and reormers saw as necessary or Chinas development were consciously non-Chinese. In act, as Susan Brownell points out, both Herbert Giles and Mao overlooked cen-turies o martial arts traditions such as wushu when they declared that China lacked athletictraditions (Brownell 2009: 342). O course it did not, but the Western ideal o sport was so

pervasive that activities like wushu could hardly be recognized as competitive athletic activi-ties. For unlike sports in the west rom which the very denition o sport had descended,wushu lacked clear structures or competition and traditionally was more about physicalperormance than contestation.

Wushus particularity and embedded-ness in Chinese culture also made it impractical orthe modern Chinese state because there were no other nations with whom Chinese wushuspecialists could compete. Only by establishing an entire competitive ramework drawnrom Western gymnastics or the activity could wushu become like a sport (Brownell 2009:346). With scoring systems, wushu was westernized, and China even attempted to have the

modied martial art adopted as an Olympic sport. But while Japanese judo and Korean tae-kwondo were added to that pantheon, wushu was snubbed, partly because the Chinese hadconsistent political outalls with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) (Brownell2009: 346). Since then, Chinese martial arts have become celebrated entertainments werethey ailed to be ormal competitions, and Chinese national sport looked or new alterna-tives.

able tennis, called ping-pong in China, would become the most popular and iconic oChinas modern sports. Tis was closely connected to its presence in Chinese media and

Chinas success in the sport. While hosting the 1961 able ennis World Championships,Chinese elevision broadcast the nal games live to over 10,000 television sets. When Chi-

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nese players won three gold medals, an unprecedented athletic coup or the country, viewerscelebrated by writing, calling and telegraphing the station to thank them or the broadcastand express jubilation (Brownell 2009: 350-351). While the number o viewers might nothave been extraordinary, the events mediation and its reactions ollow the patterning o amedia event. Te event represented heroic action by great men, the athletes, ollowedby the spontaneity o mass action, in this case letters, phone calls, and telegraphs (Dayan &

Katz 1992: 21). But the event was also transormative in that in changed Chinas relation-ship to the sport o ping-pong (it was now a champion, and could compete at the highestlevel) creating its own constituencies o ping-pong players and ans that might not haveormally existed beore (Dayan & Katz 1992: 15). Tis is not to say that ping-pong in Chinawas created by this event (or how could talent be developed or the victory beore the act?)but rather to acknowledge this media event as a watershed moment in Chinese sport.

Tis tight interweaving o mediation and sports in China also emphasizes the act that in amassive nation with an immense population, the televising o sporting events on nationalnetworks allowed citizens to ocus on the same set o signals and content.

Te establishment o a national teleision network and the rapid improvements in teleision transmission technology contributed to the centrality o sports in the shaping onational identity. Only the national Spring Festial programme had a larger teleisionaudience than major sports eents (Brownell 2009: 353).

It is worth noting that the centrality o sports Brownell highlights here is not an inevitableoutcome o a national television network, but rather an outcome at least partially inormedby the programming decisions o that network. But the important point in Brownells pas-sage is that sports programming was immensely popular in China, and was viewed in con-

nection with ideas o Chinese identity. Tis was at once because o the actions o the ath-letes in these programs, and because the popularity o sport events oriented viewers to the

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same stimulus at the same time. Te sports broadcasts were media event connect[ing] cen-ter and periphery through direct communion with central symbols and values (Dayan &Katz 1992: 14, 196). From the metropolises o Beijing or Shanghai, Chinese sports broad-casts connected with the periphery o the larger Chinese nation, creating an act o remotespectatorship that acknowledged (through the V content) and produced (through concur-rent watching) ideas o Chinese identity.

Tis is closely akin to what Benedict Anderson has called the phenomena o imaginedcommunities in which media technology (or Anderson print, but or Dayan & Katztelevision) serve to bind citizens across any number o other social and cultural dierences.It is also akin to what Stuart Hall has advanced about the creation o identity in nationalcontexts. As Hall writes, national cultures are composed not only o cultural institutions,but o symbols and representations. A national culture is a discourse (Hall 1992: 292-293).Even more suggestively, Hall claims that nations are always composed o dierent socialclasses, and gender and ethnic groups which work across social divisions by providingthem with an alternative point o identication- common membership o the amily o the

nation (Hall 1992: 297). In China, sport and its televising are the symbols and representa-tions o which the national culture is partly composed. Tose symbols are not simply thegame, games actions, players, stories, or activities, but also the television programming itsel,which is broadcast in an ofcial national language with a specic vocabulary and underlyingideology. By oering these same symbols and representations to both the center and theperiphery, the executive and the armer, men and women, etc. the broadcast also attempts toprovide Halls alternative point o identication. In other words, simply watching Chinesesport on television gives one access to certain representations and discourse about beingChinese.

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In 1987, NBA Commissioner David Stern arrived in China to pitch his product. Heshowed videos o NBA games to CCV executives and oered them a revenue-sharing dealor broadcasting a game or two each week (Borger 2008). In accepting the oer, the Chi-nese signaled what appeared to be an unprecedented openness to Western media culture.For decades, CCV and other Chinese television stations had produced their own contentexclusively, blending the political assumptions and ideas o China into the media they pro-

duced and broadcast. And while the NBA deal certainly built on the popularity and impor-tance o sport in modern China, David Sterns product eatured something entirely new.Te games being shown eatured no Chinese athletes and were being played in a countryhalway around the world. Where Chinese sports broadcasts had previously ocused almostexclusively on Chinese National teams and athletes, contextualizing their actions with thelogic and ideolog y o the PRC, the NBA represented a media discourse without nationalistChinese overtones.

As small but signicant media events the televising o NBA games represented a rupturein the ability o Chinese televising media to connect the countrys periphery to the same

center its own media had. Because these media events were set outside o the Chinese na-tion-state, they no longer centered locations like Beijing or Shanghai but instead privilegedAmerican cities such as New York as centers, while making all o China a periphery. Tis,at least, would be one way o working through the signicance o this V deal through thetheoretical rameworks o Dayan & Katz. Tis viewpoint would contend that the Americanorigins o NBA game broadcasts unavoidably carried American cultural norms and identi-ties as well. For i the center o NBA game broadcasts was outside o China and its culturalcontext then the direct communion with central symbols and values that Chinese mediahad used were now partly supplanted by American symbols and values embedded in theAmerican basketball games (Dayan & Katz 1992: 196). Tis is not to characterize Chinese

television viewers or indeed any media consumers as weak or vulnerable to strong mediamessages, but to emphasize through Dayan & Katzs theory that where media are produced

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The NBA enters China


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within certain contexts and carry messages indicative o those socio-economic situations.For a nation like China that had very limited media access to discourses outside o its ownproduction in 1987, this NBA television deal was thereore highly remarkable, as represent-ed a new orientation in media consumption or China.

Te popularity o the NBA in China has grown dramatically. Te presence o the sport

in Chinese media was careully complimented by league initiatives in China and patientmarketing. o keep development managed and on track, the NBA opened an ofce in HongKong in 1992 (NBA.com 2008). At another time, the NBA hosted the Chinese NationalBasketball team in the US, oering ree proessional coaching and small games. Te ex-change program no doubt did more than oer the Chinese an opportunity to improve theirplay, as it consciously promoted the American style o play, and positioned the Americanleague as the ultimate authority in basketball. Within China the NBA has been care-ul to be seen giving more than it receives. It contributed to the rebuilding o schools hitby [2008s] earthquake in Sichuan, and builds ree courts or needy institutions (Borger2008). Te courts, o course, directly acilitate the popularization o game, and with con-

spicuous NBA branding on the courts, direct amateur players towards the proessionalleague.

Te NBAs use o exhibition games in China oers a ascinating comparison in the eectso mediation. For though the mission o such proessional tours has always been the same grow the popularity and thus value o the game in China it is the sports mediationthat has established its value (or not) a priori. Beore CCV was showing NBA games, theWashington Bullets (now the Washington Wizards) did a tour o China in 1979 (Free-dom du Lac 2009). Tis tour may have laid some oundations or the eventual popularityo the league in China, but it was also a very isolated incident. Te NBA made no attempts

to ollow up on the visit, and made no deals with Chinese sports ofcials. Fast orward toOctober 2007, when the NBA brought the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic to

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Beijing, and one nds a very dierent story. At this event, only the second since the 1979visit, Orlandos Dwight Howard was mobbed by ans despite his relative obscurity in theUnited States (Denton 2007). Te media reported that nearly 300 million people in Chinawere playing basketball, a gure close to the contemporaneous population o the entireUnited States (Denton 2007). Tis led NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver to observeTis preseason has given us a chance to bring NBA players to [China] in person. Oen

now its become a question o being able to meet a demand (Denton 2007). Tis demandhad been created by the mediation o NBA games in China. How else could the Chinesehave known who Dwight Howard was? Where the 1979 Bullets arrived in China has ob-scure, despite the act that they had just won the NBA Championships, the obscure arrivedin China as objects o adoration in 2007.

Te dierence between these two events can again be theorized by Dayan & Katz MediaEvents. In that text, the authors argue, during the [media] event, principals are cast inmythic roles (Dayan & Katz 2009: 191). Tis is to say that in widely watched sportingevents, prominent athletes are positioned by the narrative o their games as heroic and

notable. Tese principals are given identities constructed partly through their actions ina game or contest but disseminated through media technology and ramed by the gamessignicance o a media event. So one nds an individual like Dwight Howard has a prin-cipal cast in a mythic role by his mediation. In a 2008 international basketball gamebetween the US and China, a Chinese sports analyst wrote o the relative ailure o the gameas a media event because it did not eature NBA players who had been made mythic bytelevision broadcasts. Except or (LeBron) James and (Dwayne) Wade, the analyst report-ed the Dream Seven team is not so well known in China. It needs the highlights on Vrst (MacLeod 2006). Tus, who the Dream Seven are is directly related to their presenceand construction as V subjects. Tey must become highlights on V in order to become

subjects worth going to see in person. For as the analyst regrets, the US China game didnot sell out even its small arena capacity o 10,000. But perhaps more tellingly, the CCV

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broadcast was watched by hundreds o millions despite taking place on a Monday evening(MacLeod 2006).

Te rise o basketball in China has represented a dramatic erosion in the popularity o ping-

pong, a sport that once dominated ideas o modern Chinese nationalism through repre-sentations o Chinese identity. In a series o celebrated photographs, Chairman Mao can beseen playing ping-pong during the 1970s (Houmin 1962). Trough early television broad-casts (discussed earlier) ping-pong created one o the sports rst media events in China,and closely afliated the identity o the country with the prowess o its table tennis play-ers. Almost no history o modern China ails to write o ping-pong diplomacy in whichChinese ping-pong players hosted a team rom the US and in the process paved the wayor Chinas admission to the UN in October 1971 (Brownell 2009: 351). Because o thisping-pong has been celebrated in China as the little globe that moved that the big globe(Brownell 2009: 352; Xu 2006: 93). Te sport has been so closely tied to the emergence o

a powerul modern China, and the Chinese have been so successul at the sport in interna-tional competitions, that the game has become a symbol o the state itsel.

In Te Question o Cultural Identity Stuart Hall claims, national cultures are composednot only o cultural institutions, but o symbols and representations. A national culture is adiscourse- a way o constructing meanings which inuences and organizes both our actionsand our conceptions o ourselves (Hall 1992: 292-293). For China, ping-pong would beone prominent set o symbols and representations in its domestic national discourse. Byallowing himsel to be photographed playing ping-pong, Mao used his own symbolic valueas the ace o the Chinese state to endorse the playing o the sport as acceptably Chinese.

In requently screening ping-pong games, CCV afliated the success o the sport, and itsrules, nuances, and spectatorship, to the success o the state writ large. With the aphorism

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about the little globe that moved the big globe the sport is given direct agency in Chinesepolitics as a orce o more than athletic contest, but also o political potential and value.In the United States, table tennis has been stereotypically connected to the Chinese withlms like Balls o Fury (2007) presenting Chinese mastery o the sport alongside slapstickWestern ineptitude. Within China, the sport has organized action and conceptions o theChinese to paraphrase Hall, by encouraging millions to play the sport (actions) and speak

o it as Chinese (conceptions).

But today there is a change in the culture o China as ping-pong loses ground to basketball.Te catalyst, by most reports, is the media itsel and the way the media has cast basketballas a cool. As the Washington Post writes Millions continue to call ping-pong Chinasnational game. But or younger generations, whose sports horizons have been broadened bysatellite V, Internet chat rooms and star-making advertising now available in China, thereis less interest (Fan 2008). Te Asia imes Online goes urther.

CCVs lie broadcasts o table tennis games used to be as popular as lie National

Basketball Association matches fom the United States, said Jiang Heping, CCVssports director. But there was no suspense this time as the Chinese team was too strong.Te audiences are not interested because o the huge gap between Chinese and oreignplayers, Jiang said (Wong 2009).

Connecting ping-pongs decline and basketballs growth, Jiang ironically overlooks the rolehis very organization has played in shaping the attitudes o its Chinese audience. For whowas that rst showed NBA games in China? And who continues to?While others, including a Chinese middle school teacher have also lamented we alwayswin all the ping-pong games -- theres no suspense, the mediation o basketball and its

production o cool have been a big part o its success (Fan 2008). My students preer toplay basketball explained the same teacher or them, its a symbol o coolness (Fan 2008).

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Te NBA is a very cool sport, explained a college student in the same year Its the ashion,the attitude and the power (MacLeod 2008). Given these testimonies it may be unsurpris-ing that a NBA survey in 2007 claimed 83 % o Chinese citizens under 25 were ans o theleague at some level (MacLeod 2008). Tese are the same citizens who have had their sportshorizons have been broadened by satellite V and the basketball games that come with it.By the time Beijing hosted the Olympics in 2008, the dominance o basketball in the coun-

try had become undeniable. Te most expensive event tickets at the games (not a ceremony)were or basketball, which exceeded the second most expensive ticket table tennis ttingly by nearly $200 (Chinese Consulate o Manchester 2008). During the opening ceremo-nies, China was led not by one o its gold medal avorites or previous Olympic medal win-ners, but by Yao Ming, the countrys celebrated 7-oot plus NBA basketball star (Fan 2008).When he scored the opening basket against the US in an early Olympic tournament game,there was deaening roar in the arena o 18,000 and around the country as the game becamethe most-viewed sporting contest ever in China (Himmer 2008). o call this a mediaevent would thus be doubly true. Like all media events this game synchronized and o-cused the population o China onto a single shared moment produced and ramed by media

practice. But the game was also a media event in that it had been constructed by mediatechnology and global networks or over two decades. Yao Mings opening basket was parto a scoring drive that had displaced ping-pong, redirected the cultural attention o Chineseyouth, and created a new Chinese identity that involved playing and watching basketball.

It might be tempting to characterize the rise o basketball and the NBA in China as irreut-able evidence o globalization, in which the local or traditional is supplanted wholesale bythe global. But as Stuart Hall writes instead o thinking o the global replacing the local, it

would be more accurate to think o a new articulation between the global and the local.(Hall 1992: 304). Tis new articulation is characterized by a renegotiation and rede-

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nition o what it means to be global and local. For while the NBA has represented aglobal culture intervening in Chinese lie, the NBA has also been shaped by China, takingup Yao Ming as a superstar, traveling to the country or games and promotions, and in 2008,ormally oering its content in the Chinese language through NBA.com/China. Now Chi-nas most popular website, NBA.com/China demonstrates the interaction between thesetwo cultures (broadly positioned as global and local) and represents the NBAs willingness

to localize its global brand or the particulars o the Chinese market (NBA.com 2008).Tis new venture is o course motivated by powerul economics including double-digitgrowth (CIE). But it also motivated by the very vitality o basketball anywhere and every-where. For i a massive nation like China can learn to love and play and televise basketball,than basketball can escape its own ormer local culture or new localities and yes, even,global aspirations.

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Chao, L 2008. Pro Basketball Ups its China Eort Wall Street Journal, [online] 17 Oct.Available at:< http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2008/10/17/pro-basketball-ups-its-china-eort/>[Accessed 27 November 2010].

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SlamDunkingin Beijingessay prepared for masters

degree work in sociology at the

university of cambridge

cc dec. 2010 - attribution

// by Zachary McCune

Slam Dunking in Beijing

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