Thomas Bach, I.O.C. President, Says He Will Meet Peng Shuai at the Games

Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said Thursday that he would meet at the Winter Olympics with Peng Shuai, the tennis player from China who largely disappeared from public life after making sexual abuse accusations against a political official in November.

“The answer is yes,” Bach said soon after sitting down to answer questions at his traditional pre-Games news conference. “We will have the meeting. I am very happy, and also grateful to Peng Shuai.”

The questions, on a variety of pressing issues, were plentiful. Chief among them, though, was the status of Peng, whom Bach had invited to dinner during a private phone call in November. They would meet, Bach said, after Peng was cleared to enter the Olympics’ so-called closed loop, the restrictive bubble created around the Games to try to prevent coronavirus outbreaks.

Asked whether he planned to press for an investigation of Peng’s claims of sexual assault — a suggestion sure to anger China’s government — Bach said he would first speak with Peng to see whether she wanted an inquiry. “It must be her decision,” he said. “It’s her life. It’s her allegations.”

Peng’s status remains so sensitive in China that the interpreter handling the Chinese translation of the news conference did not mention her name when relaying the question.

An I.O.C. spokesman said afterward that there was no timetable yet for the meeting.

Bach was also questioned about the Beijing Games’ strict Covid prevention measures, which have snared several athletes and team personnel in sometimes onerous and confusing protocols; and about China’s suppression of the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority, in the western Xinjiang region, and accusations that Uyghurs are being pressed into forced labor.

Bach, a former Olympic fencer, lamented the “extremely challenging” issues faced by athletes forced into coronavirus quarantine in China, and drew on his own athletic experiences in expressing sympathy with those whose competitive hopes have been jeopardized, or ended, by positive tests.

On the Uyghur issue, though, Bach demurred. “The position of the I.O.C. must be, given the political neutrality, that we are not commenting on political issues,” he said. “Because otherwise, if we are taking a political standpoint, and we are getting in the middle of tensions and disputes and confrontations between political powers, then we are putting the Olympics at risk.”

The Games would lose their “universality,” he said, if they became politicized. That, Bach said, “would lead to the end of the Olympic Games.”

Pressed on thinly veiled threats by Chinese officials to arrest athletes who plan protests that would be illegal under Chinese law, Bach said, “The athletes enjoy freedom of speech in press conferences and social media.” This right, he added, was “enshrined implicitly” in the rules about protests that govern the Olympic movement.

Still, he cautioned, “I would suggest to every athlete, wherever the Games are taking place, whenever an athlete is making a statement, he does not insult other people, that he is not violating the rights of other people.”

The status of Peng, however, took center stage. The I.O.C. has been broadly criticized for its response to the situation, suggesting at first that it would handle the case with “quiet diplomacy” — meaning that the organization would not publicly contribute to the furor over her whereabouts.

Critics and human rights campaigners viewed that not as diplomacy, but as an unwillingness to confront China — a vital Olympic partner — about its treatment of Peng, a three-time Olympian. Many ridiculed his suggestion that they meet for dinner.

But the furor continued. Later that month, Bach conducted a video call with Peng. The I.O.C. did not release a video or a transcript of the call, and their statement revealing that it had taken place, which made no reference to Peng’s accusations, raised more questions than it answered.