BEIJING—After Joe Tsai bought the Brooklyn Nets in September, his focus was on unseating the Knicks as New York’s favorite team. Instead, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba quickly found himself embroiled in the National Basketball Association’s showdown with China.
As the Nets prepare to play the Houston Rockets in Brooklyn on Friday, he may again find himself in the hot seat.
Tsai was born in Taiwan, made his career on the mainland as a founder of online-retail giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and lives in Hong Kong—a one-person embodiment of the various strains of Chinese identity over the past century.
When Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet in support of Hong Kong protesters set off an unusual showdown between the NBA and China over free speech, Tsai attempted to explain the situation publicly with a long message on Facebook about the anger Chinese people feel about perceived threats to China’s territorial sovereignty because of the country’s history of foreign occupation.
That upset Americans who called Tsai a shill for Beijing’s regime—especially for characterizing Hong Kong protesters as “separatists,” a term also used by China’s state-controlled media, though protest leaders say they don’t seek independence. Nearly a month later, Tsai is still trying to explain himself.
“All I ask is for the critics to read my full post, let the facts sink in and reflect on what they would do if they had the same hurtful experience that Chinese people went through during those years of foreign invasion,” he told The Wall Street Journal this week.
Tsai said his views reflect that of many mainland Chinese people, saying that what began as a peaceful protest has been “hijacked” by violent acts.
“Many of these acts are directed against China as protesters burn the Chinese national flag, destroy shops that they deem to be close to China and beat up people just because they speak Mandarin,” Tsai said. “You can’t blame citizens in mainland China for interpreting these acts as an assault on their identity. The protesters have lost their narrative and there’s waning support for their tactics.”
Tsai’s background has led some to question what motivates his views.
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Besides owning a team in a sports league trying to grow internationally, Tsai remains the executive vice chairman and a major shareholder of Alibaba, China’s most valuable company. Like any major business in the country, it cannot thrive without at least the implicit support of Beijing. He is also chairman of the Alibaba-owned South China Morning Post, a major English-language newspaper in Hong Kong.
A 55-year-old married father of three, Tsai was born in Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China considers its territory, but holds the passports of Hong Kong as well as Canada, via his parents.
Tsai said his parents left the mainland for Taiwan in 1948, a year before the Communist takeover of China. When a reporter mentioned his “Taiwanese” heritage over coffee in September, well before Morey’s tweet, Tsai stopped the conversation and said: “I’m Chinese.”
Tsai’s parents sent him to the U.S. for high school and then Yale University, where he played lacrosse. He worked in private equity in Hong Kong before taking a chance on an internet startup in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. He became Alibaba’s chief financial officer and Jack Ma’s right-hand man, implementing the eccentric leader’s vision by figuring out the details of undertakings such as its record-setting initial public offering.
“He wasn’t one to grab the limelight. He’s described himself to me as Jack’s interpreter.” said Duncan Clark, author of “Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built” and an early investor in the company. “Jack can be very impulsive. Joe is more analytical.”
Tsai said the bankers of then-Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov contacted him out of the blue in 2017 to gauge his interest in buying a minority stake in the franchise. He secured a 49% stake and the option to buy out Prokhorov, which he did in September. At the time, he said he felt lucky to buy a formerly woebegone team that became title contenders this summer after signing stars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. He mused about trumping the crosstown rivals, saying “I want the children of Knicks fans to be Nets fans.”
But he suddenly found himself in the middle of something bigger in Shanghai in early October, after Morey’s tweet imperiled two preseason games set to be played in China between the Nets and the Los Angeles Lakers. Tsai advised NBA commissioner Adam Silver and tapped into local contacts to preserve ancillary services, such as ambulances required for the games, which were ultimately played, after vendors and partners considered pulling out.
He said he also felt compelled to explain the situation in China to NBA fans. “Supporting a separatist movement in a Chinese territory is one of those third-rail issues,” he wrote in his Facebook post.
Critics pounced. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, said in a statement that Tsai “parroted Beijing’s Orwellian spin.” Sports and political commentators said he and the NBA were putting profit before free speech and human rights. And Hong Kong democracy activist Nathan Law, who attended the protests at the Nets’ Oct. 19 preseason game in Brooklyn, said he wanted to send Tsai a message. “He’s trying to use a false information to accuse Morey for sticking up for Hong Kong and he is colluding with the Communist Party,” Law wrote on Twitter.
Tsai said he was not surprised by the backlash. “Reasonable people will disagree on a complex issue,” he said. “The spirit of free speech is based on people’s willingness to have reasoned discourse instead of pinning labels on those they disagree with.”
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Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com
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