China: Silencing a tennis star over #MeToo accusations
When a Chinese tennis star accuses a top Communist Party official of sexual assault and then vanishes from public view, the world is right to fear for her safety, said The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) in an editorial. On Nov. 2, former Wimbledon doubles champ Peng Shuai wrote a long post on Chinese social media accusing former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, 75, of forcing her into sex several years ago. “I can’t describe how disgusted I felt,” wrote Peng, 35, who also described having had an on-off relationship with Zhang. “I feel like a walking corpse.” The post was removed after 30 minutes, and Peng’s accounts went dark for weeks, prompting the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) to demand proof of her well-being. At first, Chinese authorities posted a “clearly dubious” statement they claimed to be from Peng, which said she was resting at home and that the accusations she had made against Zhang were untrue. Then officials arranged a 30-minute video call between her and International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach in which she professed to be fine. That won’t cut it, said Peter FitzSimons, also in the Morning Herald. As long as Peng is in China, she is under the party’s control. If she’s really OK, “let’s see her wave happily at the next tournament outside China—and see if she applies for asylum.”
Peng is now a global cause célèbre, said Shivani Naik in The Indian Express (India). Tennis stars including Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, and Novak Djokovic have expressed concern, while the WTA has threatened to ax a “billion-dollar sponsorship deal” with China. Peng is not the first high-profile person to be “disappeared” in China: Artist Ai Weiwei, actor Zhang Zhehan, and property mogul Ren Zhiqiang all vanished— some of them permanently—after criticizing or embarrassing the regime. The international outcry may have saved Peng from a similar fate. Inside China’s tightly controlled internet, “Peng has not just disappeared, she has become a nonperson,” said James Griffiths in The Globe and Mail (Canada). Any mention of her online is subject to intense censorship, and even posts about other tennis players are being heavily policed. But “China’s censors cannot control the narrative outside the Great Firewall.” Peng has “become a symbol of Beijing’s heavy-handed policies” in Tibet, Xinjiang, and elsewhere, and calls are mounting for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Some Chinese have found ways to share Peng’s allegations through word of mouth and via VPN internet workarounds, said Guy Sorman in ABC (Spain). If this #MeToo moment builds, it will undermine President Xi Jinping’s official narrative that sexual abuse is a problem of the decadent West and that China is a utopia of women’s equality. Nobody ever believed that, of course. Ordinary “Chinese know well the sex life of Mao and his successors,” and the lack of women in top political roles is apparent to all. But Peng’s allegations have utterly shattered Xi’s mythmaking, and her bravery “will undoubtedly unleash others” to tell their stories. Xi’s best option now is to air Peng’s accusations and to ensure that Zhang “ends his days in a prison or some labor camp.”