Do we like Yao Ming?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A long record of wildlife and schools work and no harmful words found, held back by his state-aligned silence on Peng Shuai's allegations.
Nothing fresh we could verify on Yao lately. A few sites claimed a retirement announcement in 2026, but they conflict and none came from a reliable outlet, so we've left them out.
Yao is the Chinese ex-NBA star who went from Shanghai to the Houston Rockets and became the face of basketball across China. After retiring from playing he moved into running the game, and was president of the state-linked Chinese Basketball Association until he stepped down in 2023.
That exit came a month after the CBA threw the Shanghai Sharks and Jiangsu Dragons out of the playoffs amid match-fixing allegations. Eurohoops said the reason for his departure was uncertain, and no statement from Yao was reported. Nothing in what we read accuses Yao himself.
The harm check is where the asterisk lives. In 2019 the CBA he headed suspended ties with the Rockets after GM Daryl Morey's Hong Kong tweet, while Yao personally stayed quiet in that coverage. In January 2022 he told reporters Peng Shuai was in “pretty good condition” at a December meeting. He didn't address her alleged assault claim against a former vice premier.
Where you land depends on whether you read that as a state-linked official staying inside a very tight box, or as a missed chance to back a woman who'd gone quiet. Either way, we found no words from him against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants, and nothing on conspiracies or vaccines.
The good stuff is real. As a WildAid ambassador he fronted the shark-fin campaign, credited with cutting shark killings for fins in China by at least half. He then pushed on to ivory and rhino horn, petitioned China's top advisory body for an ivory ban and went to Africa to film a documentary.