Peng Shuai: where is China’s missing tennis star?

Fears remain for Chinese

Fears remain for Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai even after
she claimed to be safe and well during a video call yesterday
with the International Olympic Committee.

The sports champion, who has won two Grand Slam women’s doubles
trophies, disappeared earlier this month after making sexual
assault allegations against a retired senior Chinese minister.

The allegations

In a post on Chinese social media in November, Peng publicly
accused former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. She
said that the senior Communist Party official had
“forced” her to have sexual relations with him.

Addressing the 75-year-old retired politician, who was a close
ally of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Peng described what she said
happened after she visited his home to play tennis. “That afternoon
I didn’t give my consent and couldn’t stop crying,” wrote Peng, 35.
“You brought me to your house and forced me and you to have
relations.”

She acknowledged that her claims could not be proved,
however, writing: “I have no evidence… there is no audio record, no
video record, only my distorted but very real experience.”

The post – which was removed from the social media
site, Weibo, within minutes – marked the first time that
such a claim had been made against one of China’s senior political
leaders. What happened next caused concern worldwide.

The disappearance

The disappearance of Peng shortly after she made the
allegation triggered widespread concern, “with
international sports stars and governments calling on China to
provide proof that she was safe”, said the BBC^[1]. The UK Foreign Office
asked Beijing to “urgently provide verifiable evidence of her
safety and whereabouts”.

That request was echoed by the UN and by
other tennis players, including Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka^[2].

The return

As global pressure piled on, disputed evidence of Peng’s
well-being began to emerge.

State-run CGTN last week published a screenshot on
Twitter^[3]
of what appeared to be an email sent by Peng to the World Tennis
Association. The email said that her earlier accusations were
“not true” and that she was “resting at home and everything is
fine”.

But doubts were flagged about the “awkward language and the
cursor visible in the screenshot”, The Guardian^[4] reported.

On Saturday, images were posted on social media
that “supposedly show Peng having dinner with her coach and
friends in Beijing”, said Sky News^[5].

And on Sunday, Chinese state media released a video
that appeared to show the player being introduced at a youth
tennis match in Beijing. A subsequent clip of Peng signing tennis
balls for children emerged from other state media outlets later in
the day.

Amid suspicion over the authenticity of the images and
videos, Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of state-run tabloid the
Global Times, wrote on Twitter^[6]: “Those who suspect Peng
Shuai is under duress, how dark they must be inside.”

Hours later, Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic
Committee (IOC), spoke to Peng in a 30-minute video call
that was also attended by Chinese sports official Li
Lingwei and the chair of the Athletes’ Commission, Emma
Terho.

In a statement, the committee said that Peng “explained that she
is safe and well, living at her home in Beijing, but would like to
have her privacy respected at this time”.

According to the IOC, she accepted an invitation to have dinner
with the three officials in January, ahead of the 2022 Winter
Olympics^[7].

The concerns

The “apparent propaganda push” has done little to lessen
the “firestorm of global concern for Peng”,
said CNN^[8].

A spokesperson for the Women’s Tennis Association said the
video call with the IOC did not “alleviate or address”
its concerns about her “well-being and ability to communicate
without censorship or coercion”.

“This video does not change our call for a full, fair and
transparent investigation, without censorship, into her allegation
of sexual assault, which is the issue that gave rise to our initial
concern,” the spokesperson added.

Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said:
“What we have here is essentially a state-controlled narrative –
only the government and its affiliated media are generating and
distributing the content about Peng’s story.”

Nathan Law, a pro-democracy dissident who fled last year from
Hong Kong to London, has argued the email in which Peng appeared to
withdraw her abuse allegations had “all the hallmarks of a
forced confession, a favoured tool of the Chinese authorities”,
The Telegraph^[9] reported.

Law said: “Whenever a scandal is revealed, Chinese authorities
silence or attack the victim.”

Other experts told the newspaper that Peng might have
been abducted into the government’s programme of “enforced
disappearances”, known officially as RSDL – Residential
Surveillance at a Designated Location.

People who have criticised the Beijing regime reportedly often
vanish “for several months, while they are interrogated in a
nondescript government building”. They then “they re-emerge in
society with an outwardly different personality, their plucky mode
of resistance replaced by a supine deference to Beijing
authorities”.