The NBA and its owners should explore whether they want Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai to remain part of the league given that a business he co-founded was designated recently by the U.S. government as a "Chinese military company," the head of a congressional committee told ESPN.
The comments from Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Michigan) come in the wake of the House Select Committee on China in June calling on Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Wizards , the WNBA's Mystics and the NHL's Capitals, to end his company's marketing partnership with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.
The Pentagon last month accused Alibaba of supporting China's military and defense industry and banned defense contracts with the company. Tsai is chairman of Alibaba, which has disputed the characterization and has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense to get removed from the U.S.
blacklist. Moolenaar said Tsai, who was born in Taiwan and is a Canadian citizen, has "to my knowledge zero allegiance to America beyond his financial agreements here." Moolenaar, chairman of the bipartisan advisory committee, added, "This is really a moment for the NBA and its owners to decide if they want an owner in their ranks who's actively working against American interests and helping the Chinese military." The NBA and Tsai didn't respond to requests for comment, but a representative for the Nets owner provided a statement from Alibaba, which said there was no basis for the U.S.
government adding the company to its list. "Alibaba is not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy," the statement read.
"We have filed a lawsuit against the Department of War challenging the designation and will take all necessary steps against attempts to misrepresent our company." In its lawsuit, Alibaba states that it's governed by an independent board unaffiliated with the military and that its products and services are not made for weapons, defense or intelligence. In a June 30 letter to Leonsis, Moolenaar asked that his company Monumental Sports & Entertainment end contracts with Alibaba and its affiliates and to provide details of the deals between the businesses.
Moolenaar wrote that Alibaba "represents a danger to American security and the stability of the western Pacific." Moolenaar, who is running for reelection in Michigan this year, told ESPN that Monumental responded to the committee that it will continue its relationship with Alibaba, a decision the congressman called "very disappointing." Moolenaar said Monumental was "enabling" the Chinese government's surveillance and military efforts. "We have received and responded to the letter.
We have no further comment at this time," a spokesperson for Monumental wrote to ESPN. "I think it's a moment of reckoning as to what the NBA sees their role in terms of a market, but also accountability and their own reputation," Moolenaar said.
"And it starts with Washington, D.C." In 2022, ESPN reported extensively on Tsai in the context of the NBA's billion-dollar business in China. An April 2022 story revealed Tsai's defense of some of China's most controversial policies, including how he described the government's brutal crackdown on dissent as necessary to promote economic growth.
Tsai also has defended a law used to imprison scores of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong as necessary to squelch separatism, and, when questioned about human rights, asserted that most of China's 1.4 billion citizens are "happy about where they are." The ESPN report also laid out how Alibaba had partnered with companies blacklisted by the U.S. government for supporting a "campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-tech surveillance" through state-of-the-art racial profiling.
Tsai declined to be interviewed for the April 2022 story. Regarding ESPN's 2022 reporting about the NBA's ties to China, the league declined requests to interview commissioner Adam Silver or deputy commissioner Mark Tatum, who oversees the league's international operations.
In a statement at the time, NBA spokesperson Mike Bass said, "We continue to believe that exporting media rights of NBA games to fans in more than 200 countries and territories around the world, including China, is consistent with our mission to inspire and connect people everywhere through the power of basketball."