By Joyce Zhou

MACAU (Reuters) -The National Basketball Association (NBA) returned to China on Thursday for the first time since a controversial parting of ways in 2019, staging two games in Macau and announcing a multi-year partnership with Chinese technology giant Alibaba.

The NBA is due to play two pre-season games in the Chinese special administrative region on Friday and Sunday, part of a five-year contract with Las Vegas Sands’ Macau unit Sands China.

The games mark the first time the NBA is playing in Macau, the world’s largest gambling hub, and follows a years-long absence amid controversy over the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

The Macau games aim to bolster the NBA’s profile in China, where around 300 million people play basketball, at a time of rising political tensions between the

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