SHANGHAI, China — China's star basketball player, 7-foot-5-inch Yao Ming, is coveted by National Basketball Association teams willing to pay him millions. But his path to wealth in the United States has been complicated by a Chinese government straining to retain control of its elite athletes.
Yao's team, the Shanghai Sharks, has said it will support his participation in the NBA draft in June after blocking him in previous years. But Beijing has yet to approve any move by Yao, 22, who led his team to the China Basketball Association championship last week, and the government on Wednesday published strict new regulations governing Chinese athletes who want to play professional sports abroad.
Chief among them is one rule requiring Chinese athletes to turn over at least half their pretax earnings, including endorsement income, to Chinese government agencies for the length of their careers. That could cost Yao millions each year.
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An agile player even at 7-5, Yao is widely expected to be among the top three draft picks. He can run the floor like a small forward, find open teammates cutting to the basket and deliver a jump hook flawlessly, and, unlike Shaquille O'Neal, he shoots 80 percent from the free-throw line.
Yao's case reflects the tension China is feeling as one of the world's last major authoritarian states trying to participate in a global community dominated by more open societies. With its recently minted membership in the World Trade Organization and its winning bid to host the 2008 Olympic Summer Games, the country is eager to be seen as a modern society able to play in all the world's arenas. At the same time, it is reluctant to give up too much of its rigid control.
China has already allowed two of its lesser basketball stars to go to the NBA, and the new rules will apply to them, too. But Yao will be a test case for the country's decision to let its elite athletes play abroad while keeping them on a tether by which it can tap their earning power and recall them at will to play on national teams.
"Chinese athletes are different from those in the U.S.," said the Sharks' deputy general manager, Li Yaomin, explaining that because China's athletes are trained in a government-sponsored system, they are beholden to the state. "American athletes are free."
The news of Yao's latest potential hurdle caught the league and the players' union off guard.
"From our end, that's something that would be between him and the government," Russ Granik, the league's deputy commissioner, said, adding he was unaware of any similar arrangements between China and the two current Chinese-born players, Wang Zhizhi of Dallas and Menk Bahteer of Denver.
Asked if he foresaw the Chinese government's salary request hindering Yao's draft status, Granik added, "I'm assuming they don't want it to be a problem and they'd like to have him play."
China's regulations reportedly stunned Yao and his family, who have been waiting years to realize the dream of playing in the NBA. As a top draft pick, Yao could earn as much as $12 million from his first three-year contract with a U.S. team and millions more in promotional income.
Yao declined to be interviewed for this article. In Wednesday's Shanghai Morning Post he was quoted as saying, "I have endured so much frustration, a little more won't beat me."
Contributing: Mike Wise