National Post (National Edition)
Peng's plight might add more tarnish to Beijing Olympics
China played host to its first Olympics in 2008 in Beijing. Just seven years later, it was bidding to host them again, in the same city.
By any practical measure, this made no sense, but with Western nations at the time barge-poling away from costly Olympic ventures, Beijing 2022 was granted.
China, having just spent many billions to host an Olympics, would now spend many billions more to show off the same city it had just shown off. Strange as that decision was, it fits with a pattern of China, and its ruling Communist Party, using sports to project power and influence on the global stage.
China has hosted NBA and NHL games in recent years, and its Chinese Super League was poised to upset the global soccer order five years ago when its teams started attracting foreign stars with massive salary offers, a project said to have the blessing of President Xi Jinping. That boom time has since gone bust, but China remains a major part of the international sports calendar with events in golf, tennis and Formula One auto racing.
But with Beijing 2022 now a little more than two months away, all that sports-as-diplomacy work threatens to come undone thanks to events involving one of China's own sporting heroes. Peng Shuai, the 35-year-old tennis star who was once one of the top-ranked doubles players in the world and a three-time Olympian herself, has been missing for two weeks. She posted a lengthy message on Chinese social media that accused Zhang Gaoli, a top Communist Party official, of forcing her to have sex with him three years ago, but it was quickly deleted. When there was no further word from her, and the Women's Tennis Association was unable to make contact, fears grew that she had been detained following her allegations.
A state-run television station published a letter that it said was from Peng. It waved away the sexual assault allegation as “not true,” which is odd since the allegations first came from her verified social media account, and said she was not missing but “resting at home and everything is fine.” The bland tone of the statement was in marked contrast to the original vanished post, in which Peng described years of heartbreak during which, she said, Zhang used her and “discarded” her.
Steve Simon, the head of the WTA, said in response to the purported letter from Peng that it only increased his concern and that his organization wanted verifiable proof that she was OK. He said the WTA would reconsider its ties with China — where the WTA Finals are scheduled to be held for the next nine years in Shenzhen — if its concerns are not addressed. Some of the sport's biggest stars, including Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, have taken up the cause on social media, and federations like Tennis Canada have requested “indisputable proof that she is safe.”
There were many reasons to question Western participation at Beijing 2022 before this past week, from the relatively isolated, like the unlawful years-long detention of a pair of Canadians, to the remarkably broad, such as reports of human-rights abuses against the minority Uyghur population in China's northeast that amount to a campaign of ethnic cleansing. But a case like that of Peng Shuai could focus those concerns in a way that the allegations of what has been going on in Xiajiang province might not, for the simple reason that she's someone with an international profile. She has powerful friends, and the story of an athlete who was disappeared after alleging assault against a well-connected party official has quickly become a global cause.
In the same way that the attention paid to news stories of assault or abuse can explode when corroborating video or audio is released, Peng's familiar name and smiling face add a startling personal touch to something that has long been understood outside of China: the CCP will get rid of problems it doesn't want to deal with in any manner it sees fit.
The Peng case is also, unlike a long-running ethnic conflict, something with a clear and obvious solution: Just let her speak. If she has not been detained because she dared to speak out against a former politician, then let's see her. It's a simple demand, and one that everyone from the International Olympic Committee to individual countries can make from now until the Beijing 2022 opening ceremony in early February: Produce Peng Shuai, or we aren't coming. Either a member of the Olympic family — as the IOC loves to call it — has been made a hostage in her own country, or she hasn't. So, which is it?
The IOC, to no one's surprise, has not taken an aggressive stance. It is, so far, to use a line from a spokesman, working on “quiet diplomacy.” That same spokesman also said the IOC had received “assurances” that Peng was well, a statement that should have caused worldwide eye-rolling injuries. China has not earned the benefit of the doubt here.
The United States is meanwhile reportedly leaning toward a diplomatic boycott of Beijing 2022, which means its athletes would compete but it wouldn't send politicians or other government officials for the usual Olympic glad-handing and hobnobbing. Other Western nations are expected to follow that lead.
But the big question is whether a diplomatic boycott becomes a full boycott — or at least the threat of a full boycott — if Peng does not return to public view in the coming days and weeks. Would China allow its global spectacle to be compromised just to protect the reputation of one of the president's pals?
“You said that you are not afraid,” she wrote in her original post, and she knew that going after someone like Zhang would be “like throwing eggs against a stone.” She sounded like she knew it was hopeless.
Peng Shuai may yet find that she has stronger allies than she imagined.