On Tuesday and Wednesday, two separate teams from the Chinese Basketball Association were involved in bench clearing on-court altercations. (Photo courtesy of Sina Sports)

Chinese Basketball Association pre-season should be a time to enjoy import rumors, special clauses made up seemingly on-the-fly, and the Jiangsu Nangang Dragons’ annual hold out.  Just call it some of the charms that come with watching Chinese hoops year round.

But this week, Chinese hoops has jutted out its well-documented ugly side for all to see again. And not just once, but twice.

On Tuesday, what started as a pre-season match between the Guangdong Foshan Dralions and an All-Star team visiting from Australia turned into a violent bench-clearing chair-throwing brawl that had obvious simiarities to the one that went down last August between the Bayi Rockets and the Georgetown Hoyas.

The video below was taken by a Chinese fan who was sitting in the stadium’s upper section:

Within hours, the CBA announced that Foshan would be prohibited from playing and practicing for a week. The team will also have to write self-reviews which will be sent into CBA administration for review. Three players in all were fined for their involvement in the fight. He Ben and Yang Wenbo, each of whom played big minutes for the team last year, were fined RMB 10,000 (about US $1587) and Zhao Lei, a reserve, was fined RMB 5,000 (US $793).

On Wednesday, just one day after the Foshan incident, it was reported that Jiangsu got into a major fight with a travelling All-Star team from Chicago (pictures). However, soon after reports hit the internet, Jiangsu general manger, Wang Min, went on his Weibo (Chinese twitter) account to set the record straight.

“People on the internet have been saying that [Jiangsu players] Yi Li and Meng Da were involved in a fight today. But, in fact that simply did not happen… both of them held up and controlled themselves.”

Wang was right — a video of the incident has since surfaced on online video sites that proves initial reports were exaggerated:

Still, the two events, especially the Foshan fight, will continue to swell the already large black eye on Chinese basketball. In addition to the high-profile brawl between Bayi and Georgetown, there have also been other widely reported on-court fights. Last year, the Chinese National Team and a Brazilian club team were engaged in a bench clearing melee after a Brazilian player set a highly questionable on-ball screen on China’s Zhang Qingpeng. Zhang hit the ground hard and was later diagnosed with a concussion. China received similar punishments to the ones Foshan were handed down.

But in the eyes of Chinese fans, those punishments aren’t severe enough. In a poll on Sina.com, 68% blame the Foshan players for not being calm and 75% feel their punishment was too light.

Count us as one of the 75%. Suspending all games and practices will have no effect in preventing things like this from happening again. Because the root of this problem lies within Chinese refereeing. And that’s not to say the players aren’t to blame for charging out with fists and chairs, because they definitely are. But, blaming only them takes attention away from the people who are supposed to have full control the game, the refs.

I wasn’t at the game, but I didn’t have to be. I, like anyone else who has either watched games or played in them, knows that Chinese refs do a piss-poor job of managing games. On top of that, they cheat blatantly. Overly-physical play is allowed, cheap shots go uncalled and vexed, argumentative players and coaches aren’t reeled in and T’d up. What happens next is pretty easy to understand: Players get really frustrated and ultimately really angry that the laws of the game aren’t being held up, and play escalates until tempers get out of hand and a fight breaks out.

That all can be prevented — if refs blow their whistles more and put an end to dirty play and hard fouls. And yet, for some reason, Chinese refs consistently refuse to do that. Much is made about China’s poor system for developing youth players, but the system the CBA uses to train and approve in-game officials could use just as big of a remodeling.

Another thing that could use some remodeling? How about making a rule on players leaving the bench area? Fans of the Miami Heat, New York Knicks and Phoenix Suns may hate the rule, but it has completely shut down the potential for 12-on-12 mass brawls in the NBA. What once was a problem in the league now is not because players and coaches know if you leave the bench area, you’re going to be suspended and fined. The problem of bench players rushing onto the court is more serious in China, so make the penalties more severe — five games suspension for coming onto the court, plus a big fine. And then on top of that, subject them to the punishment almost all Chinese students who misbehave receive and force them to write “I will not leave the bench” 1,000 times neatly and legibly on a piece of paper.

Because after all, this is “basketball with Chinese characteristics.” And while we’re pretty open-minded about the differences of hoops between East and West, this simply has to stop.