{"id":44521,"date":"2021-11-23T23:03:25","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T23:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=44521"},"modified":"2021-11-27T19:42:28","modified_gmt":"2021-11-27T19:42:28","slug":"whereispengshuai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=44521","title":{"rendered":"#WhereisPengShuai"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

NYMag link<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/div>\n

This NYMag article<\/a> is by far the best on the on going saga. Wishing best for Peng but I\u2019ve a few questions:<\/p>\n

1. Has anyone considered that she was forced to make the complaint – a political struggle – to humiliate Zhang and his factions?\u00a0\u6709\u6ca1\u6709\u4eba\u8ba4\u4e3a\u5979\u662f\u88ab\u8feb\u6295\u8bc9\u2014\u2014\u653f\u6cbb\u6597\u4e89\u2014\u2014\u662f\u4e3a\u4e86\u7f9e\u8fb1\u5f20\u53ca\u5176\u6d3e\u7cfb?<\/p>\n

2. In her decade long affair with Zhang, she knew well he\u2019s married. What kind of force she was under to take up this affair to begin with, or her total disregard of the wife\u2026 even out of love? She\u2019s a successful player with nearly $10m prize money from wining tourneys (not counting the endorsements).<\/p>\n

3. WTA threatens to pull out of China. But it was only a few years ago, 2014 USOpen semi final, to be exact, they allowed Peng to prolong her injury time out to 20 some minutes: it showed Peng had poor sportsmanship and USTA terrible regulation. The injure time is usually 3 or 4 minutes. It was super unfair to Peng\u2019s opponent and to us, the spectators. So seven years on, WTA is willing to leave China? What\u2019s behind this decision – MeToo movement or more?<\/p>\n

The article<\/a> \u21d3\u00a0Women\u2019s Tennis Had to Stand Up to China
\nBy Caira Conner<\/p>\n

Photo: VCG\/Visual China Group via Getty Images
\nBefore the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai went missing on November 2, the most notable sources of tension between Western sports leagues and China usually ended with those leagues doing their best not to offend the rising superpower.<\/p>\n

In December 2019, after former Arsenal footballer Mesut \u00d6zil tweeted about the country\u2019s inhumane treatment of the Uighurs, the club quickly released a statement reminding everyone that the club had always \u201cadhered to the principle of not involving itself in politics.\u201d (Though it has seemed perfectly fine with publicly supporting other political causes.) Nevertheless, within two days of the tweet, a Chinese state-run TV network pulled an Arsenal match from its schedule. They were eventually allowed back on the network, but no commentator would say \u00d6zil\u2019s name out loud \u2014 and his name and image all but vanished from the country. When \u00d6zil was left off Arsenal\u2019s Premier League and Europa League teams last year, some speculated that his China infraction was part of the reason why.<\/p>\n

In the U.S., it\u2019s the NBA that has most vividly experienced the consequences of crossing China. Two months before \u00d6zil spoke out, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted (and later deleted) his support of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. The NBA released a statement explaining that while the league recognized different countries would have different viewpoints on political matters, ultimately, it was \u201cnot the role of the NBA to adjudicate those differences.\u201d A few days later, Morey tried to clean up his remarks. But the damage \u2014 and it was a lot of damage \u2014 was done. By January of 2020, the NBA was on track to lose up to $400 million in revenue as a result of the tweet, as Chinese business partners abandoned deals with the league.<\/p>\n

In October of this year, Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter posted a video to Twitter in which he spoke for nearly three minutes in support of Tibetan independence, calling Xi Jinping a \u201cbrutal dictator.\u201d Tencent, one of China\u2019s largest technology companies and streaming platforms, swiftly pulled the live broadcast of the Celtics\u2013Knicks game off the air, and removed all replays of Celtics games from the platform. After considerable backlash over its handling of Morey\u2019s tweet, the NBA has chosen not to publicly cave this time, and Kanter says Commissioner Adam Silver has expressed support for his views \u2014 in private. Still, the NBA has not made a statement defending Kanter\u2019s speech, or suggesting that anything in their business relationship with China will actually change.<\/p>\n

Of course, there is a critical difference between these players\u2019 stories and that of Peng Shuai: None of them disappeared.<\/p>\n

A brief summary of recent events: On November 2, Peng posted a lengthy message to the social-media platform Weibo describing how she\u2019d been sexually assaulted by China\u2019s former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli, 40 years her senior, three years earlier. Peng detailed the pain and confusion she experienced in their decade-long relationship, which at times had been consensual.<\/p>\n

The post was deleted within the hour. Peng\u2019s Weibo account disappeared. Internet searches within China for her name and \u201ctennis\u201d were blocked.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, the Women\u2019s Tennis Association, the organizing body of professional women\u2019s tennis, was in uncharted waters. Peng wasn\u2019t just associated with the organization; she was recently a fairly major star. In 2013, Peng was the first Chinese player to win the WTA Tour Championships. The next year, she and her doubles partner were ranked No. 1 in the world, making Peng the first Chinese tennis player of any gender to hold the top spot.<\/p>\n

At first, the WTA took a familiar, cautious approach. The organization waited 12 days after Peng was first presumed missing to release a statement. When it finally did, on November 14, the WTA called for a comprehensive investigation into the allegations against Zhang, and for the end of censorship against Peng. Social-media users blasted the organization for taking nearly two weeks to speak out. But over the next few days, instead of slinking further into the background, or refusing to get involved in a political matter, the WTA doubled down in its efforts to intervene in China\u2019s policies on transparency. And the narrative of sports leagues treading carefully with China took a dramatic turn.<\/p>\n

When China state-affiliated media CGTN tweeted a copy of an email allegedly sent by Peng to Steve Simon, the head of the WTA, explaining that she was \u201cfine and resting at home,\u201d Simon was swift to respond, countering that the questionable email \u201conly raises my concerns as to her safety and whereabouts.\u201d On social media, the WTA pressed on, joining in the #WhereisPengShuai movement with a tweeted photo of the star. Simon has said that the WTA was prepared to pull out of 2022 tournaments in China should Peng\u2019s safety not be verified. Consider that in 2018, the WTA landed a ten-year partnership with China for Shenzhen to host the WTA tour finals each year, including a record-shattering $4.7 million prize for the 2019 champion. This is no small threat.<\/p>\n

On November 21, the president of the International Olympics Committee, Thomas Bach, said he spoke with Peng in Beijing via video chat, and that she seemed relaxed and \u201cwished for privacy.\u201d No mention was made of the sexual-assault allegations against Zhang Gaoli, Peng\u2019s deleted social-media accounts, or why she hadn\u2019t been heard from in 19 days. Apart from state media releasing a couple of videos of Peng out with friends \u2014 it could not be determined when they were shot \u2014 this was the closest the public had come to knowing if Peng was, in fact, okay. Bach has a major incentive to promote the \u201cnothing to see here\u201d line, with the Beijing Winter Olympics coming up in February.<\/p>\n

The WTA didn\u2019t budge. In an email to Reuters, a spokesperson for the WTA said that while they were glad to see photos of Peng, a video call with the IOC did not \u201calleviate or address the WTA\u2019s concern about her well-being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion.\u201d Furthermore, they still wanted a \u201cfull, fair and transparent investigation\u201d into Peng\u2019s allegations.<\/p>\n

Tennis players are effectively self-employed. They have access to health insurance and pension plans through the WTA, but these programs are voluntary, not mandatory. It is only once players are ranked in the top 250 that are they required to pay an annual fee. There is no legal mandate within the WTA in which the organization has to protect its players, or a structure guaranteeing players the safety and assurances of full-time employment. In this sense, Simon\u2019s ongoing, insistent ownership of Peng, demand for her safety, and willingness to irrevocably risk millions of WTA business dollars for the cause is remarkable.<\/p>\n

It also feels unavoidable. Up to this point, sports leagues could uncomfortably look the other way when it was only a matter of an individual criticizing the Chinese government, and being censored in return. The cost of complicit public silence on \u201cpolitical matters\u201d would pale in comparison time and again to the profits lost by an organization pushing back. But for the WTA to not have taken a stand \u2014 to have stepped aside and let China\u2019s state media continue sending out staged photos and phony reassurances on Peng\u2019s whereabouts, to have shouldered the reputational fallout at the cost of preserving financial security as the world\u2019s biggest tennis stars have made increasingly forceful statements about Peng\u2019s plight \u2014 would have been more disastrous than any financial fallout. At least, that\u2019s the calculation Steve Simon has made.<\/p>\n

Yet even now, Simon is on a lonely path. The IOC is no stranger to overlooking human-rights abuses, but what about the NBA, Premier League, or ATP, the governing body of men\u2019s tennis, which has not gone nearly as far as its counterpart? The tenuous status quo of how to deal with China seems more fragile than ever.<\/p>\n

Should Peng resurface in the coming weeks, the WTA will have to decide on its course of action for 2022. Right now, it feels plausible that Steve Simon could actually steer the organization the way of LinkedIn, and out of China altogether. That would be a true inflection point, and one that has been a long time coming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This NYMag article is by far the best on the on going saga. Wishing best for Peng but I\u2019ve a few questions: 1. Has anyone considered that she was forced to make the complaint – a political struggle – to humiliate Zhang and his factions?\u00a0\u6709\u6ca1\u6709\u4eba\u8ba4\u4e3a\u5979\u662f\u88ab\u8feb\u6295\u8bc9\u2014\u2014\u653f\u6cbb\u6597\u4e89\u2014\u2014\u662f\u4e3a\u4e86\u7f9e\u8fb1\u5f20\u53ca\u5176\u6d3e\u7cfb? 2. In her decade long affair with Zhang, she knew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tennis-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}