Basketball as metaphor for Sino-US relations

• Source: The Global Times
• [20:10 June 09 2009]
• Comments

By Jeremiah Jenne

It’s that time of year when as a sports fan I turn my attention to my favorite sport: basketball. That’s not to say I’m any good. I think I used to be pretty good, but that was some time ago and now I’m getting a little old, a little casual, a little slow and I’m not in very good shape. What I do have is experience, some size, and an enthusiasm for a game that with every year is passing me by.

In Beijing I try to play basketball about three times a week, either at the university where I teach history or at the Dongcheng Community Sports Center across the street from the hutong where I live. Different courts, different players, same game, same problems.

First of all, I play basketball because I love the game and because my wife thinks it would be a good idea if I lost some weight. Let’s face it: the academic lifestyle – junk food, caffeinated beverages, and odd hours – isn’t the healthiest one, and my father just suffered his first heart attack at the age of 62.

It was also suggested that playing ball would be a great opportunity to make friends at school and in the neighborhood.

Not the way I play ball.

I’m not really that good, but I’m a large mammal in a country of mostly smaller mammals. (That’s what you get when you forgo ESPN for your basketball analysis and head straight for Animal Planet.) In NBA lingo I am a “disruptive force under the basket” which translates as: I’m a big fat guy that you have to find some way around or over if you want to score.

Also, while some of my 30-something contemporaries are starting to complain about how they have “lost a step,” I have an advantage here of sorts – I never had that step in the first place. Neither did my father, who taught me his favorite assortment of basketball techniques like the “shirt grab when the refs look the other way” “the flying elbow at head level,” “moving screen,” and “hip check lay-up.”

Yep, I’m that guy: The big, slow oaf who cheats all the time. Scary thing is that it works on the court, but for making friends, not so much.

For example, yesterday I was playing a lunchtime game guarding an agile kid about 15 years younger and about 30 kilogram lighter than me, who was raining threes from all over the court despite my hand in his face. On his next three-point shot, instead of jumping up and back and trying to block the shot, I jumped straight up and… okay, maybe a little bit in his direction too. He took the brunt of the blow, called a foul and – justifiably – got a little bit upset at. I felt badly BUT it worked. Every shot after that I owned him, all I had to do was take a step in his direction and his eyes said it all. He was watching me, not the basket and he bricked his last seven shots.

But just because it works doesn’t make it right. And after aggravating and alienating any number of potential Chinese friends on the court, I realized my basketball game is a near perfect metaphor for the politics of the Sino- US.

The US is in decline, but it still has size, a certain amount of technique (much of it effective, not all of it designed to make friends around the world), and an obsessive desire to win at all costs.

It may seem odd to say China lacks size, but it does. On aggregate, China may be a dragon, but take those statistics as per capita and you’re looking at more of a gecko. But you can’t deny the power of numbers and teamwork to counteract size on the court. China has those three guys working together who can hang on your arms every time you take the shot and nullify your height advantage.

And as a player on the world stage, China is showing that while its game might be rough at times (what are you going to do, she’s a 5000-year old rookie), it is learning how to be nimbler, quicker, and good at the little things that win games and frustrate larger, less speedy opponents.

But the US isn’t going anywhere soon. The question for the US, as it is for me at the community center courts is, when will it learn that winning isn’t about the score at the end of the game, but rather how many people shake hands with you afterward?