LeBron James has become the first NBA player to author a piece in China's state-run People's Daily newspaper,
According to The Japan Times, the unusual move suggested that the top-flight North American basketball league's years-long row with Beijing could be coming to an end.
The NBA enjoyed decades of fast growth in China, where some 300 million play the game, ballooning into a business said to be worth more than $4 billion.
The league was one of the most popular U.S. cultural exports to the country until 2019 when Daryl Morey, then general manager of the Houston Rockets, sent a tweet in support of anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.
The fallout was swift and brutal. China's state broadcaster CCTV stopped showing NBA games for 28 months, local sponsors cut ties, and Rockets merchandise vanished from store shelves. NBA commissioner Adam Silver revealed in 2022 that financial losses amounted to "hundreds of millions" of dollars.
Six years later, despite renewed U.S.-China trade tensions, the People's Daily publication of James' essay highlights how the NBA's relationship with its most important market outside North America is close to being fully repaired.
In the past three years, CCTV has gradually returned to broadcasting NBA games as before and Chinese companies have signed deals with the league. The NBA is gearing up next month for two preseason games in Macau, the first time since 2019 that NBA teams play on Chinese soil.