Cup of Cha
This is China

Yi Jianlian, a basketball player between 6′7″ and 7′ tall, between 16 and 24 years of age, is everything good, and everything bad about China. I can’t imagine one person summarizing an entire nation’s potential and possible peril more than this man.

Mr. Yi was chosen as a high lottery pick in this year’s NBA’s draft because he appeared to be enormously talented. I say ‘appeared’ because no one was quite sure. He refused to hold workouts with other players, and he had only played in the terrible Chinese leagues before. So instead of demonstrating his skills against a live human being, he showed himself to be far superior to an inanimate object, in this case a chair. For a Chinese man this was a poor choice as he immediately was dubbed “The Chairman” (sometimes “Chairman Yi”).

The point is, Milwaukee chose Yi entirely based on potential, much as companies have flocked to China because 1.3 billion people is irresistible, even if most of them won’t be able to afford western products for a generation. Speculators look at the possibilities and they are too good to stay away.

Similarities parallel Yi and his motherland more than just the untapped potential. His very act of refusing to work out on a fair basis shows a contempt for a functioning marketplace that dogged the first Chinese companies that listed on the stock exchange years ago. Remember when the only companies that went public were SOEs with tons of debt and no value–and people bought them up anyway? Those companies refused to let people look at their financial structures or evaluate whether they were a good investment. And most of them tanked.

But Yi is not a company, and his success or failure will be a very public affair. He has demanded, and been given, a starting spot in the Bucks lineup. The Chinese population has been outraged that the NBA wisely decided not to include him on internet All-Star ballots, knowing that it would guarantee the rookie an undeserved spot in the Eastern Conference’s starting lineup.

When you are given something that you have not yet earned there is a tremendous amount of pressure, and the stakes become raised. Well before China passed Germany as the third biggest economy in the world, it was already being dubbed the most important, an unstoppable force. And perhaps it is, just like Yi Jianlian may one day become a worthy starter for his own team, and even possibly an All-Star. The man and the country both have tremendous ‘up-side’. He may one day dominate the league, but I wish he had posted up a basketball player rather than a chair, earned his spot rather than requiring it. When you demand only to show off your skills in a rigged system, no one believes the validity of the outcome.

By the way, if you’re wondering, through the first six games Yi is second among rookies in both points and rebounds. And China has had double digit growth virtually every quarter for the past twenty years.

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