What Chinese fans want When the tweet that shifted the NBA's economic future was building up steam, I wrote that part of the reason the Chinese government can wield so much power over the corporations it does business with is that it could present its population of 1.4 billion people as a united monolith operating in lock-step with the official agenda. That's one hell of a boycott. The government doesn't conduct polls on controversial subjects and it prohibits others from doing so as well.