The NBA's Chinese broadcast partner abruptly erased Boston Celtics highlights and live streams from its website and app on Thursday, not long after Celtics center Enes Kanter called China's leader, Xi Jinping, a “brutal dictator."
Kanter, in multiple social media posts Wednesday, spoke out against "cultural genocide" in Tibet, an autonomous region to the west of China where the Chinese government has cracked down on freedoms and exerted control.
The swift response of Tencent, a Chinese internet technology company that in 2019 agreed to a five-year, $1.5 billion expansion of its partnership with the NBA, is reminiscent of the early stages of China's response to Daryl Morey's 2019 tweet in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.