Globalization and the Governance of Chinese Sports: The Case of Professional Basketball

This paper aims to explore the manifestations of globalization and sport governance in China through a lens of basketball. Specific focus is centred on the extent of the universalization of the National Basketball Association's (NBA) governance model in China and the adaptation from Chinese basketball. It argues that the vertical-centralized power allocation of Chinese basketball has prevented the NBA's governance model being fully assimilated and universalized in the Chinese context. When the localization of the NBA's capitalist setting encounters the state power of China's socialist regime, Chinese political nationalism has tended to provoke a firm entrenchment to protect the government's sovereignty.