Where in the world Chinese tennis star Peng Shaui?

[Deberg_1990]

She hasn’t been heard or seen in 2 weeks…..

Tennis player Peng Shaui is missing after accusing a Chinese official of sexual assault. This should be setting off alarm bells, not only because China is set to host the Olympics. https://t.co/oRQYQytbfv

— Jane McManus (@janesports) November 16, 2021

https://apnews.com/article/sports-bu...e28aaaaf7c212d

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — An email purportedly from a Chinese professional tennis player that a Chinese state media outlet posted on Twitter has increased concerns about her safety as the sport’s biggest stars and others abroad call for information about her well-being and whereabouts.

So far, those calls have been met by silence.

Chinese officials have said nothing publicly since the accusation about two weeks ago by Grand Slam doubles champion Peng Shuai that she was sexually assaulted by a former top government official. The first #MeToo case to reach the political realm in China has not been reported by the domestic media and online discussion of it has been highly censored.

Steve Simon, the chairman and CEO of the Women’s Tennis Association, questioned the authenticity of the email intended for him, in which Peng says she is safe and that the assault allegation is untrue. It was posted Thursday by CGTN, the international arm of Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

“I have a hard time believing that Peng Shuai actually wrote the email we received or believes what is being attributed to her,” Simon wrote.

The statement, he added, “only raises my concerns as to her safety and whereabouts.”

Simon has demanded a full investigation, and the WTA said it is prepared to pull tournaments out of the country if it doesn’t get an appropriate response. Top players including Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic have spoken out, and the hashtag WhereisPengShuai is trending online.

China has largely suppressed a #MeToo movement that flourished briefly in 2018 and is forging ahead with the Beijing Winter Olympics in February despite boycott calls by activists and some overseas politicians over China’s human rights record.

Asked repeatedly about the case, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said again on Thursday that he is unaware of it.

The 35-year-old Peng is a former No. 1-ranked player in women’s doubles who won titles at Wimbledon in 2013 and the French Open in 2014.

She wrote in a lengthy social media post on Nov. 2 that Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier who was a member of the ruling Communist Party’s top leadership committee, had forced her to have sex despite repeated refusals three years ago.

The post was quickly deleted from her verified account on Weibo, a leading Chinese social media platform, but screenshots of the explosive accusation quickly spread across China’s internet. She has not appeared in public since then, raising questions about her whereabouts and whether she is being detained.

Zhang, who is 75, dropped from public sight after his retirement in 2018, as is usual for former senior officials. He is not known to have any close connections to current leaders.

Peng’s accusation is the first high profile accusation of sexual assault against a powerful politician in China. Past accusations touched on prominent figures in the non-profit world, academia and media, but never reached the Communist Party’s top officials or state-owned companies.

CGTN posted the statement on Twitter, which is blocked in China along with many other foreign platforms such as Google and Facebook. It did not post it on Chinese social media, nor was there any mention of the purported email behind the Great Firewall, which separates the Chinese internet from the rest of the world.

Some internet users have circumvented the controls and posted about the news in private social media groups. Freeweibo.com, which records censored posts from Weibo, said searches for “Peng Shuai” and “Zhang Gaoli” were both among the top 10 searched topics on Thursday.

Searches for Peng Shuai’s name on China’s Sogou search engine turn up only articles about her tennis career. Her account on Weibo no longer allows comments, and no results turn up if people search for her Weibo account.

Peng wrote that Zhang’s wife guarded the door during the alleged assault, which followed a round of tennis. Her post also said they had sex seven years ago and she had feelings for him after that. She also said she knew speaking up would be difficult.

“Yes, aside from myself, I kept no evidence, no recordings, no videos, only the real experience of my twisted self. Even if I’m destroying myself, like throwing an egg against a rock, or a moth flying into a flame, I will still speak out the truth about us,” the now-deleted post said.

Her allegation came just three months before Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics, which have been the target of a boycott campaign from multiple human rights organizations largely over China’s repression of Uyghur Muslims. The games face a possible diplomatic boycott by the United States and other countries. Rights groups have likened Beijing’s 2022 Olympics to Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics. China has consistently denied any human rights abuses and says its actions are part of counterterrorism programs.

Peng has played in three Olympics. The International Olympic Committee said Thursday in a statement that, “We have seen the latest reports and are encouraged by assurances that she is safe.”

The Switzerland-based IOC, which derives 73% of its income from selling broadcast rights and another 18% from sponsors, has not criticized China, and often repeats that it is only a sports business and has no remit to act on policies of a sovereign state.

Xu Guoqi, a historian at the University of Hong Kong, explained the difference between the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2022 Games.

“The big difference between the two Beijing Games is that in 2008 Beijing tried to please the world,” Xu told The Associated Press recently in an email. “In 2022, it does not really care about what the rest of the world thinks about it.”

The WTA can better afford to bring pressure since it is less dependent on income from China than the IOC or the NBA. The basketball league lost an estimated $400 million in broadcast rights when China blacked out its games in the 2019-2020 season after then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of protesters in Hong Kong.

Simon’s statement said that Peng has displayed incredible courage, but that he is still concerned about her safety.

“The WTA and the rest of the world need independent and verifiable proof that she is safe,” he wrote. “I have repeatedly tried to reach her via numerous forms of communications, to no avail.”

[BigCatDaddy]

Originally Posted by Meatloaf

Prolly no worse than getting “justice” in the US. Just sayin’….

This can't be a serious post. Women disappear after accusing men of sexual assault?

[JohnnyHammersticks]

This girl lived close to you?

[Pogue]

Originally Posted by BigCatDaddy

This can't be a serious post. Women disappear after accusing men of sexual assault?

Worked for OJ.

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by TLO

Would

You enjoy sex with dead girls? Gross

[Rain Man]

China's been nothing but trouble since the communists took over. Name me three positive impacts that China has had on the world since 1945. I bet you can't.

The only positive thing I can think of is that brief war with Vietnam in the 1970s where you basically had two communist countries killing each other's soldiers. And even that is more of a double negative than a positive.

What else about that country is positive? They pollute, they violate human rights, they put plastic in dog food, they pixillate their pornography (wait, I think that's the Japanese - disregard), they steal and copy intellectual property, they kill intellectuals periodically, they undermine pricing with third-world labor pay, they have really bad food before it's Americanized ... what have they done that's positive?

Edit: I probably should have added "unleash pandemic viruses into the world" to that list.

[BWillie]

She'll be found dead face down in a Pangolin cage soon.

[Gary Cooper]

Originally Posted by Mennonite

Exactly. You think our country's so innocent? Everybody acts like we're living in a Lee Greenwood wet dream while conveniently forgetting about what happened to Yahoo Serious after he got on the wrong side of Ronald Reagan in 1987.

They named a search engine after him?

[ToxSocks]

You'd think these women would learn that the Clintons are not to be ****ed with.

[comochiefsfan]

So uh......when are we going to actually get tough on China?

Making people disappear left and right, aggressively annexing territories, creating and lying about a global pandemic.

But hey! Their products are cheap!

Time for the world to step in and put them in check.

[louie aguiar]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

China's been nothing but trouble since the communists took over. Name me three positive impacts that China has had on the world since 1945. I bet you can't.

The only positive thing I can think of is that brief war with Vietnam in the 1970s where you basically had two communist countries killing each other's soldiers. And even that is more of a double negative than a positive.

What else about that country is positive? They pollute, they violate human rights, they put plastic in dog food, they pixillate their pornography (wait, I think that's the Japanese - disregard), they steal and copy intellectual property, they kill intellectuals periodically, they undermine pricing with third-world labor pay, they have really bad food before it's Americanized ... what have they done that's positive?

Edit: I probably should have added "unleash pandemic viruses into the world" to that list.

They make almost all of the real cheap shit sold in American big box stores

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by comochiefsfan

So uh......when are we going to actually get tough on China?

Making people disappear left and right, aggressively annexing territories, creating and lying about a global pandemic.

But hey! Their products are cheap!

Time for the world to step in and put them in check.

I’m sure the NBA and President Xi Jinpings “Old friend” Biden Will get right on that.

[stumppy]

I'm sure she getting "re-educated". She'll pop up sooner or later and claim she misspoke about being rapped.

[ToxSocks]

Originally Posted by stumppy

I'm sure she getting "re-educated". She'll pop up sooner or later and claim she misspoke about being rapped.

Wait, there's a place you can send women for that? **** ive made a mistake....

[Graystoke]

Som Ting Wong in CHINA

[Spott]

15 minutes later and I still don’t want to read the op.