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Brooklyn Nets star Ben Simmons donated a basketball court to a town in China’s Guizhou Province last week and praised a prominent Chinese official who dismissed reports of persecution against Uyghur Muslims.
Simmons donated the court to Machang Town in the province, where the sport of basketball has taken off. According to Basket News, a basketball tournament in the province boasted 30,000 in attendance and scores more online.
In a press conference held at the opening of the court, Simmons thanked Huang Ping – who’s been the consul general of China’s New York Consulate since 2018.
"I’m very excited and happy to announce the court donation," Simmons said. "Deep thanks to Ambassador Huang Ping and Guizhou government. I first visited China to play basketball when I was 16 years old, and then again as an NBA player. I always enjoyed visiting the people, and the fans are always so welcoming, and the love for basketball there is incredible.
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Nets guard Ben Simmons during a time-out in the Atlanta Hawks game at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on March 31, 2023. (Brad Penner-USA Today Sports)
"My wish is to bring the joy of basketball to more people, so I wanted to donate a court to help places where people love the game and can benefit from new facilities. I hear people in Guizhou have amazing local basketball tournaments, and they just had this year’s final. I wish the people of Guizhou all the best, and hopefully will get to see them soon in the future."
Huang was in the spotlight early this year when he made appearances at Barclays Center, the Nasdaq MarketSite and the Empire State Building, rubbing elbows with prominent American business leaders at each stop. The Nets celebrated the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit in January and Huang went on the basketball court, where he spoke briefly and received a sweater and toy rabbit as gifts from Sam Zussman, CEO of the Nets' parent company BSE Global.
Huang has a history of making controversial remarks that didn't come up at any of his recent New York gatherings. Most notably, he has frequently praised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and staunchly defended China's treatment of Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, in the region of Xinjiang.
Huang Ping, the consul general of China’s New York Consulate. (YouTube screenshot/Chinese Consulate General in New York)
"There are lots of lies here, fabricated by some people with their own political agenda," Huang said in an August 2021 interview, denying the existence of genocide and internment camps targeting Uyghurs. "As I said, there's no genocide, not a single evidence to prove that there's a genocide or something there. It's just a slandering."
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The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Department under both the Trump and Biden administrations have assessed China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. Since 2017, the Chinese government has reportedly imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in concentration camps, where, according to leaked documents from inside China, detainees are subjected to rape, torture, forced labor, brainwashing and forced sterilization.
Huang also called the CCP a "great party" and described the camps in which Uyghurs are detained as educational.
"I see these centers as a campus, rather than camps," he said. "We get these people there to be educated. And this has been quite effective in terms of countering terrorism and in de-radicalization. Up to now, there has not been a single terrorist attack in exactly four years."
Nets guard Ben Simmons controls the ball against Philadelphia 76ers forward Paul Reed at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Feb. 11, 2023. (Brad Penner-USA Today Sports)
When previously reached for comment, the Chinese consulate in New York echoed Huang's comments, telling Fox News Digital that the "Xinjiang-related issue is not about human rights" and that a "lie told a thousand times is nothing but still a lie."
The Nets are owned by Joe Tsai, a Taiwanese-Canadian businessman who is the co-founder of Alibaba. Tsai’s ties to China’s regime have been documented as well.
Tsai had defended a national security law in Hong Kong in an interview on CNBC and defended China for cracking down on alleged "separatists."
"What is this for? It's against sedition. It's against people that advocate splitting Hong Kong as a separate country. I want to make sure that we prevent foreign powers from carving up our territories. I think Hong Kong should be seen in that context," he said.
Additionally, when Tsai was asked about China cracking down on human rights, he asked the host to clarify what he was talking about. The way Tsai saw it, "the large number of the population – I'm talking about 80-90% of the population – are very, very happy for the fact that their lives are improving every year."
Injured Brooklyn Nets guard Ben Simmons watches from the bench during the New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden on March 1, 2023. (Brad Penner-USA Today Sports)
One study has previously claimed Alibaba is "effectively state-controlled." That notion is underscored by co-founder Jack Ma’s disappearance from public view after he criticized China’s financial regulators in October 2020. It was only in October 2021 that he reappeared in Hong Kong, Reuters reported.
The technologies Alibaba helped produce were used for government surveillance, according to a congressional report in 2020. The technologies have been used to "re-educate" Uyghur Muslims and force millions into camps in the western part of China – something the Chinese government has denied.
Tsai has been in full support of the NBA’s social justice movement. He and his wife Clara’s Social Justice Fund help fight racial injustice and plan for economic recovery in Brooklyn following the coronavirus pandemic. The two aim to end racism of all kinds against people of color.
However, that work contrasts heavily with Tsai’s views about heavily surveilled citizens of China.
He was asked in 2019 in a discussion at the University of California San Diego about the crackdowns on academic freedoms in China.
"It is what it is. The fact is, China today is a single-party system, so there's going to be restrictions on academic freedoms and freedom of expression. I mean, do people like that? I think most people don't like it, but I think that's how the Communist Party needs to control that in order to feel confident about pushing their policies in other areas," he said.
Joe Tsai speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on April 29, 2019. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"The single-party system is in place because the elite in China feel that China is still a developing country, and I talked about two broader goals: to make sure that the population is wealthier and doing better and also to restore this sense of renaissance and pride about Chinese culture. They feel that dissent has to take a backseat and whatever they're doing is right."
He told the Milken Institute in 2018 it was important for China to limit freedoms of its people.
"You need to understand that it is important for the communist government that there's absolute stability in the country. In the American context, we talk about freedom of speech, freedom of press, but in the China context, being able to restrict some of those freedoms is an important element to keep the stability."
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The NBA has a huge presence in China but it came under the spotlight after former Houston Rockets tweeted a pro-Hong Kong statement in 2019.
Fox News' Aaron Kliegman contributed to this report.
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