China’s 1978 “reform and opening-up” era created more room for commercial activity and international exchange. Over time, these changes helped make professional leagues and foreign sports partnerships more feasible, including in basketball.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV began showing NBA games in the mid-1980s, giving many fans their first regular exposure to U.S. professional basketball. This early media access became a foundation for the NBA’s long-term popularity in China.
In the mid-1990s, China pursued sports reforms aimed at modernizing and commercializing competition. A China.org.cn overview links 1994 reforms to the launch of a national basketball league the following year, helping move elite basketball toward a professional model.
The Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) launched its inaugural season in December 1995 with 12 teams. Creating a stable top-tier league strengthened domestic competition and made Chinese clubs more visible to sponsors, broadcasters, and international partners.
The Shanghai Sharks won the CBA title in the 2001–02 season, which ended in April 2002. The championship highlighted the growing quality and public profile of top Chinese clubs, just as Chinese stars were starting to draw serious NBA attention.
On June 26, 2002, Yao Ming was selected first overall by the Houston Rockets in the NBA Draft. His move to the NBA became a major bridge between Chinese fans and the league, accelerating basketball’s cultural and business connections across the Pacific.
The NBA staged its first games in China in October 2004, with the Rockets and Kings playing preseason matchups in Shanghai and Beijing. These games showed the NBA’s commitment to in-person events and helped deepen fan engagement beyond television.
In January 2008, the NBA announced the creation of NBA China, a company designed to handle the league’s business operations across “Greater China” (including media, marketing, and merchandising). This helped institutionalize NBA partnerships in the region and expand localized operations.
By the 2010s, NBA preseason “China Games” had become a recurring platform for games plus youth clinics, sponsor events, and fan experiences. This regular schedule supported basketball globalization by tying on-court exhibitions to longer-term development and marketing.
On July 20, 2011, Yao Ming announced his retirement from basketball due to injuries. His retirement did not end his impact; instead, it set the stage for a new phase where he could influence Chinese basketball through management and reform efforts.
Tencent became the NBA’s digital media partner in China in 2009, and later a major exclusive digital partner under a multi-year arrangement that began in 2015. This shift made streaming and mobile highlights central to NBA consumption in China, reaching hundreds of millions of users.
On February 23, 2017, Yao Ming was elected president of the Chinese Basketball Association. His appointment mattered because it tied a globally recognized basketball figure to domestic governance and league reform, linking China’s basketball system more directly to international expectations.
China hosted the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup from August 31 to September 15, 2019, putting the country at the center of the sport’s global calendar. The event highlighted China’s ability to stage major basketball competitions and further raised the visibility of basketball nationwide.
On October 4, 2019, Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey posted (and then deleted) a tweet supporting Hong Kong protesters. Chinese broadcasters and partners suspended some NBA programming, creating a major disruption in the NBA’s China market and revealing the political limits facing sports globalization.
In late October 2024, Yao Ming resigned as president of the Chinese Basketball Association, and Guo Zhenming was named as his successor. This leadership change closed a major chapter in which Yao’s personal global fame and reform agenda were closely tied to the CBA’s modern identity and its international relationships.
In October 2025, the NBA held preseason games in Macao for the first time since 2019, with the Suns and Nets playing on October 10 and 12. The return marked a partial repair of NBA–China basketball ties and showed how the NBA and Chinese partners sought to rebuild fan-facing events after several years of tension.
Basketball in China: CBA growth, Yao Ming, and NBA partnerships (1978-2024)