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      Peng Shuai, Chinese Tennis Player, Denies Sexual Assault Claim

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      Peng Shuai said in an interview with a Singaporean newspaper that she had been misunderstood. She also said, “I’ve been very free all along.”Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis star whose account of sexual coercion by a former Communist Party leader ignited weeks of tensions and galvanized calls for boycotts of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, has reversed her assertion that she had been sexually assaulted by the official.Ms. Peng made the comments in an interview that was published on Sunday by a Singaporean newspaper. But the retraction appeared unlikely to extinguish concerns about her well-being and suspicions that she had been the target of well-honed pressure techniques and a propaganda campaign by Chinese officials.The controversy erupted last month when Ms. Peng wrote in a post on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, that she had maintained a yearslong, on-and-off relationship with Zhang Gaoli, now 75, a retired Chinese vice premier. She said that in an encounter with him about three years ago, she had “never consented” and that she was “crying all the time.”She then abruptly dropped from public view, and global concern for her whereabouts grew. In a written statement later, she appeared to seek to pull back the accusation, and the Women’s Tennis Association and other professional players rallied to her side, saying they believed that her statement had been written under official duress.The tennis association suspended playing matches in China while seeking to establish independent contact with Ms. Peng. Last week, the leaders of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee criticized China’s handling of Ms. Peng’s case.In the interview with Lianhe Zaobao, a Chinese-language Singaporean newspaper, Ms. Peng, 35, said, “First, I want to stress a very important point — I never said or wrote that anyone sexually assaulted me.”“There may have been misunderstandings by everyone,” she said of her initial post on Weibo.Ms. Peng also denied that she had been under house arrest or that she had been forced to make any statements against her will.“Why would someone keep watch over me?” she said. “I’ve been very free all along.”Her denial drew skepticism from human rights advocates, who have said that Chinese officials appear to have corralled her into rehearsed video appearances.Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter that Ms. Peng’s latest statement was “only deepening concerns about the pressure to which the Chinese government is subjecting her.”Last month, video clips of her at a Beijing restaurant were posted on the Twitter account of the chief editor of The Global Times, an influential newspaper run by the Communist Party. The editor described them as showing Ms. Peng having dinner with her coach and friends. She also appeared in live video calls with the president of the International Olympic Committee and other officials with the organization.The Chinese authorities are likely to seize on Ms. Peng’s latest statement, recorded on video, to push back against calls for a full investigation of her claims and to oppose the tennis association’s suspension of matches in China.The minutes-long interview with Ms. Peng, which took place at a skiing competition in Shanghai, left many key questions unasked and unanswered.She was not asked directly about her relationship with Mr. Zhang, who was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party’s highest body. Nor was she asked how her understanding of sexual assault squared with her earlier description of what had happened with Mr. Zhang.Understand the Disappearance of Peng ShuaiCard 1 of 5Where is Peng Shuai? More

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      How China Censored Peng Shuai

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      This article is published with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom. When inconvenient news erupts on the Chinese internet, the censors jump into action. Twenty minutes was all it took to mobilize after Peng Shuai, the tennis star and one of China’s most famous athletes, went online and accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier, of […] More

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      Putting Principles Before Profits, Steve Simon Takes a Stand

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      The WTA chief has spent years in tennis working quietly to put players first. Suspending tournaments in China over the treatment of star Peng Shuai has made him the most talked-about leader in sports.Guadalajara, Mexico, gave a party for women’s tennis last month, and when it ended, with Garbiñe Muguruza winning the WTA Finals, the season’s last tournament, confetti fell through the air and a mariachi band turned the Akron Tennis Stadium into a fiesta.In the middle of it, Steve Simon, the bespectacled chairman and chief executive of the WTA Tour, stood quietly and unsmiling in a blue business suit with his hands clasped. He shared the occasional quiet word with Chris Evert and Billie Jean King, or one of the local officials he had helped persuade into holding the event on short notice, after the regular host, Shenzhen, China, pulled out because of the pandemic.Simon had plenty else on his mind. As the tournament and closing celebration unfolded, a geopolitical crisis with women’s tennis at its center had occupied much of his time and he was leading the tour down an uncertain path.On Nov. 2, the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China, of sexually assaulting her in social media posts that were quickly deleted.The Chinese government removed all mentions of Peng’s accusation, and coverage of Peng from news media outside China has been censored. She largely disappeared from public life, and Simon has been unable to communicate with her despite repeated attempts.On Nov. 13, Simon went public with his frustration, demanding that he and the WTA be able to speak with Peng independently and that Chinese officials conduct a transparent investigation into her allegations. If they did not comply, Simon said, the WTA would consider removing its nine tournaments from China, including the Tour Finals, moves that could cost women’s tennis tens and perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars over the next decade.On Wednesday, Simon followed through on his threat, announcing that after weeks of failed attempts to communicate with Peng, and no sign of an investigation or evidence that Peng can speak freely, the WTA was immediately suspending all of its tournaments in China. Simon’s stridency, in contrast to other international sports leagues and organizations that do business in China, has turned Simon, a mild-mannered former tournament director who prefers to operate in the background and leave the spotlight to his star players, into the most talked-about leader in sports.“This is not where I wanted to end up,” Simon said in an interview Wednesday night, speaking about the WTA Tour, but also, in a sense, about himself.Peng Shuai competing at the Australian Open in 2017.Clive Brunskill/Getty Images“I don’t want this to be about me,” he added. “Nothing prepared me for it, other than just trying to do what is right and communicating that with the players.”Simon’s refusal to accept China’s authoritarian stance on human rights once it directly affected one of his players stands in stark contrast to several high-profile leaders in sports who have repeatedly bent to the desires of the Chinese, including Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., and Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee.Simon has been concerned about Peng’s physical safety but also believed, as did the members of his player council and others he communicates with regularly in a player chat group, that the silencing of Peng and her sexual assault allegation amounted to a direct attack on the principle of equality upon which the WTA was founded.“It’s now December and we’ve not seen any meaningful progress,” he said Wednesday night.Simon, a 66-year-old Southern California native, played tennis at Long Beach State University and mixed doubles at Wimbledon in 1981 alongside Lea Antonoplis. He has spent his adult life in tennis coaching, running the tennis program for Adidas, and organizing and eventually directing the BNP Paribas Open, a joint men’s and women’s event in Indian Wells, Calif., known as the fifth Grand Slam.All along, Simon was quietly gaining authority within tennis circles, even if few of the players knew him particularly well. He began serving on the board of the WTA in 2004.In 2009, he worked to get Stacey Allaster, then the president of the WTA, appointed as the next chief executive. Allaster said during a rough moment for her candidacy, she privately asked Simon if he might be a better fit to lead the organization.“Without a blink he turned to me and said, ‘No, we’re going to stay the course,’” Allaster said.Six years later, after Allaster decided to step down, the WTA board unanimously selected Simon to succeed her. He has since cultivated the support of the sport’s biggest stars of the present and past, including Serena Williams and King, the founder of the WTA, while maintaining his decades-long relationships with the tournament directors who were his initial base of support.“He’s a rarity in sports,” said John Tobias, a prominent tennis agent who represents Sloane Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open women’s singles champion. “An executive who is always trying to put the focus on the tour and the players.”Before this month, Simon was best known for the work he performed behind the scenes, along with the former pro Charlie Pasarell and others, to bring Venus and Serena Williams back to Indian Wells after a 14-year absence. Serena Williams was ceaselessly booed by fans after her sister withdrew from a semifinal match between them. Williams believed that race had played a role in how fans treated her. She said at the time that Simon spent a long time listening to what she had to say on the matter and that played a major role in her decision to return.Understand the Disappearance of Peng ShuaiCard 1 of 5Where is Peng Shuai? More

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      I.O.C. Says It Held Second Video Call With Peng Shuai

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      Olympic officials said they ‘shared the same concern as many’ about the safety of the Chinese tennis star but offered no details of what they discussed with her.The International Olympic Committee said Thursday that it had held a second call with the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, trying anew to deflect criticism of its light-touch approach to China only months before the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.“We share the same concern as many other people and organizations about the well-being and safety of Peng Shuai,” the I.O.C. statement said. “This is why, just yesterday, an IOC team held another video call with her. We have offered her wide-ranging support, will stay in regular touch with her, and have already agreed on a personal meeting in January.”IOC Statement on the situation of Peng Shuaihttps://t.co/7wDhc0w33f— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) December 2, 2021
      As with an earlier call with Peng on Nov. 21, the I.O.C. did not release video or a transcript of the call, nor did it say how Wednesday’s call was arranged or who took part. The previous call included the I.O.C.’s president, Thomas Bach but also an I.O.C. member from China.Peng, 35, disappeared from public view more than a month ago after she accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China, of sexual assault. Her disappearance, China’s efforts to censor any mention of her allegations and its sometimes clumsy efforts to suggest she had retracted her claims, have only intensified concerns about her safety with tennis officials, fellow athletes and human rights groups.The I.O.C. statement, like its earlier statements on Peng, made no mention of her sexual assault claims, referring only to “the difficult situation she is in.”The latest call, which the I.O.C. said took place on Wednesday, came on the same day the women’s professional tennis tour announced it would suspend all of its events in China, including Hong Kong, until the Chinese government took several measures. It called for the government to stop censoring Peng, allow her to speak and travel freely and “investigate the allegation of sexual assault in a full, fair and transparent manner.”Olympic officials have been on the defensive for weeks for their relative silence on Peng’s disappearance, which critics of both the organization and of China have derided as an attempt to avoid even the appearance of criticizing a powerful partner. The looming Winter Olympics in China, which will make Beijing the first city to host the Summer and Winter Games, open on Feb. 4.The I.O.C. has countered that its effort to aid Peng has been a campaign of “quiet diplomacy,” a phrase it repeated in Thursday’s statement.“There are different ways to achieve her well-being and safety,” the I.O.C. said. “We have taken a very human and person-centered approach to her situation. Since she is a three-time Olympian, the I.O.C. is addressing these concerns directly with Chinese sports organizations. We are using ‘quiet diplomacy’ which, given the circumstances and based on the experience of governments and other organizations, is indicated to be the most promising way to proceed effectively in such humanitarian matters.” More

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      WTA Suspends Tournaments in China Over Treatment of Peng Shuai

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      Steve Simon said Wednesday that the women’s tennis tour would not stage tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, because he has been unable to communicate with Peng despite repeated attempts.The women’s professional tennis tour announced Wednesday that it was immediately suspending all tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, in response to the disappearance from public life of the tennis star Peng Shuai after she accused a top Communist Party leader of sexual assault.With the move, the Women’s Tennis Association became the only major sports organization to push back against China’s increasingly authoritarian government. Women’s tennis officials made the decision after they were unable to speak directly with Peng after she accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China, in social media posts that were quickly deleted.The Chinese government quickly removed all mentions of Peng’s accusation, and coverage of Peng from news media outside China has been censored. She has not been seen in public except in the company of government officials in more than two weeks.Peng, 35, a Grand Slam doubles champion and three-time Olympian, resurfaced late last month in a series of appearances with Chinese officials, including in a video conference with Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, which will bring the Winter Games to Beijing in February.“While we now know where Peng is, I have serious doubts that she is free, safe and not subject to censorship, coercion and intimidation,” Steve Simon, the chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association, said in a statement.“If powerful people can suppress the voices of women and sweep allegations of sexual assault under the rug, then the basis on which the WTA was founded — equality for women — would suffer an immense setback,” he added. “I will not and cannot let that happen to the WTA and its players.”The WTA held its 2019 Tour Finals in Shenzhen, China.Aly Song/ReutersThe suspension comes just two months before the start of an Olympics that makes Beijing the first city to host both the summer and winter Games. The I.O.C. has not indicated that the Peng controversy would affect the Games, with Richard W. Pound, a Canadian lawyer and the organization’s longest-serving member, saying that the committee prefers “quiet and discreet diplomacy.”No other sports organization has followed the WTA’s lead.“We cannot walk away from issues related to sexual assault,” Simon told The Times in an interview Wednesday night. “If we do that we are telling the world that is OK and it’s not important. That is what this is about.”“It’s the right move and I’m so proud of the WTA for taking it,” Martina Navratilova, the former champion, said. “Now we are just going to have to see if the other sports, especially the ATP, will follow.”The governing body for the men’s tour, the Association of Tennis Professionals, asked for an investigation into Peng’s safety, but has not suggested it would boycott China. And on Tuesday, World Athletics, the governing body for track and field, affirmed that it would hold its relay championships in Guangzhou in 2023. The organization is led by Sebastian Coe, a leading member of the I.O.C.China is a vast market that has provided a huge opportunity for growth among sports organizations, including Premier League soccer, the National Basketball Association, and professional tennis and golf. Doing business in China has become both lucrative and complicated in recent years as the country’s government has cracked down on free speech and political protest. Its treatment of Muslim minorities has been deemed genocide by the United States and lawmakers in several nations.Michael Lynch, who led the sports marketing division for Visa during his 16-year tenure at the company, said he expected that tennis would not be the only sport to re-examine its business in China because of the treatment of Peng. “Let’s hope this is not considered a female problem,” Lynch said. “They are all athletes. It doesn’t matter sex or gender. If there is more pressure that needs to be applied, sports will support one another. What we saw with Black Lives Matter is this is about human rights and everyone is coming to the table and supporting each other.”Women’s tennis stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years by pulling out of China. The tour has a 10-year deal to hold its season-ending tournament in Shenzhen, where organizers committed to some $150 million in prize money and millions more on tennis development in the country. The organization also holds eight other tournaments in the country.“I don’t see how I can ask our athletes to compete there when Peng Shuai is not allowed to communicate freely and has seemingly been pressured to contradict her allegation of sexual assault,” Simon said. “Given the current state of affairs, I am also greatly concerned about the risks that all of our players and staff could face if we were to hold events in China in 2022.”Simon said that women’s tennis would not return to China until its officials could speak to Peng without government interference and a full investigation into her assault accusations could be conducted. “China’s leaders have left the WTA with no choice.”Peng accused Zhang, 75, of sexually assaulting her at his home three years ago. She also described having had an on-and-off consensual relationship with Zhang.Then she quickly dropped out of public life. As demands for an inquiry grew louder, China’s state-owned broadcaster released a message that it claimed was from Peng, recanting her accusations.“Hello everyone this is Peng Shuai,” it stated before calling her initial accusation of sexual assault untrue. “I’m not missing, nor am I unsafe. I’ve been resting at home and everything is fine. Thank you again for caring about me.”The message, which few believed was actually from Peng herself, only raised concerns further, as did additional photos and videos of her that began to appear — all from sources in China’s government-controlled media.Understand the Disappearance of Peng ShuaiCard 1 of 5Where is Peng Shuai? More

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      Thomas Bach Is Criticized for His Handling of the Peng Shuai Case

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      The handling of the Peng Shuai case raised new questions about the I.O.C.’s relationship with China. One Olympic official called its actions ‘discreet.’ Critics called it collaboration.The International Olympic Committee was under siege.Peng Shuai, a three-time Olympian from China, had not been heard from for weeks after making sexual abuse allegations against a senior political official, a man who had played a central role in preparations for the coming Winter Games in Beijing.Initially silent on the disappearance of Peng, a women’s tennis star, Olympic officials were now facing a growing global chorus of concern. The WTA Tour, through its chief executive, was demanding answers and an investigation. Fellow tennis stars like Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka — but also human rights groups, politicians and everyday fans — were using social media to ask #WhereIsPengShuai? Media organizations were flooding the internet with news coverage.Cornered by the criticism, the I.O.C. finally responded. This, Olympic officials insisted, was a time not for public statements but for “quiet diplomacy.”For the organization’s many critics, the guarded, cautious language — viewed more as an attempt to explain away its silence rather than ensure Peng’s safety — was just the latest proof that the I.O.C. will not take any action that might upset China’s government, its partner for a Winter Olympics that is now only months away.The response drew public condemnation and frustration behind the scenes in the Olympic movement.“The I.O.C. must not be complicit in protecting the regime and allowing it be captured for Chinese propaganda purposes,” said Maximilian Klein, the head of international relations for Athleten Deutschland, a representative group for German athletes.The efforts of Olympic officials to clarify the status of the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai did little to assuage concerns about her safety.Andy Brownbill/Associated PressMany national Olympic committees, facing pressure at home to speak out more forcefully on China’s human rights record, are now grumbling about what they feel is a failure of leadership by the I.O.C. Some fear that the unwillingness of Olympic leaders to challenge or pressure China has left them, and their athletes, exposed to possible retribution during the Games.“In absence of them saying something, it shifts pressure to others to do so,” said one national Olympic committee official, who declined to be quoted by name out of fear of making an uncomfortable situation worse. “If we start being critical, all of a sudden it becomes more political if a nation starts to criticize China.”“We are the ones that need to keep our heads down,” the official added, “not the I.O.C.”The efforts of top Olympic officials to clarify Peng’s status have done little to ease the crisis of confidence. On Sunday, the I.O.C. released an image of a video call involving Peng and Thomas Bach, the I.O.C. president. The call was the first known contact between the tennis player and a Western sports official since she went public with her sexual assault allegations, and since China, which once hailed her successes in state media, quickly deleted them and then moved to erase any mention of her accusation.Rather than assuage concerns, though, the call only raised more questions about the relationship the I.O.C. enjoys with China’s government.The I.O.C. statement accompanying the image provided scant details of what was discussed during the 30-minute meeting with Peng, 35, and it conspicuously avoided reference to the sexual assault allegations against Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China who retired in 2018. Zhang was vice premier when Beijing was awarded the Winter Olympics in 2015, and he led an organizational committee that oversaw preparations. In 2016, he met Bach during a visit to China.In the single image released by the I.O.C., Peng is smiling broadly in a room filled with plush toys, including mascots from previous Olympics. The I.O.C. statement said Bach ended the call by suggesting he and Peng try to meet for dinner when he arrives in Beijing in January. The committee did not release any audio or transcript of what Peng said in her own words or suggest Bach or anyone else asked her about her sexual assault claims.“To just kind of whitewash the whole thing — ‘Nothing to see here!’— is generally problematic,” said Sarah Cook, the director of research for China at Freedom House, a rights organization based in Washington, D.C., referring to the I.O.C.’s handling of the case and its relationship generally with the Olympic hosts. “Collaborating with the Chinese government to suppress people’s rights is different than anything that has been done before.”Thomas Bach, the I.O.C. president, above, arranged a call with Peng when efforts by the WTA Tour and others had been unsuccessful.Petros Giannakouris/Associated PressRichard Pound, a Canadian lawyer and the I.O.C.’s longest-serving member, defended the organization’s tactics — and took aim at its critics — in an interview last week.“What the I.O.C. established is that quiet and discreet diplomacy gets you better than clashing cymbals,” Pound said. “That’s not the way you deal with any country, certainly not with China.”It is unclear how Bach managed to engineer a call with Peng when the WTA Tour and others had been unsuccessful, though the presence on the call of an I.O.C. member from China, Li Lingwei, offered a tantalizing clue.“The I.O.C. has vaulted itself from silence about Beijing’s abysmal human rights record to active collaboration with Chinese authorities in undermining freedom of speech and disregarding alleged sexual assault,” said Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The I.O.C. appears to prize its relationship with a major human rights violator over the rights and safety of Olympic athletes.”Teng Biao, a lawyer and prominent human rights campaigner who was detained in 2008 for criticizing China’s preparations for that year’s Summer Olympics, said it was illogical that Peng would have organized a call with Bach by herself. In a telephone interview from his home in New Jersey, where he now lives in exile, Teng suggested the authorities in Beijing had set up the call with Bach rather than risk one between Peng and a critic like the WTA Tour chief executive, Steve Simon, who has pressed China publicly to allow Peng to move and speak freely.When it comes to the Olympics in Beijing, Teng said, “The I.O.C. and Bach are not neutral.”For Bach, a pragmatist, there has been little room to maneuver once China secured hosting rights to the 2022 Winter Games six years ago amid a dearth of suitable candidate cities. The Olympics generate 91 percent of the organization’s income, so the I.O.C. has long avoided doing anything that might put at risk those billions of dollars in revenue.“Thomas Bach is all about protecting the Olympics,” Adam Pengilly, a former I.O.C. member, said in explaining how Bach, formerly a gold-medal-winning fencer, has moved to secure the future of the Games since assuming the presidency in 2013.Activists last month in Tokyo called for a boycott of the Beijing Games because of China’s human rights record.Philip Fong/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDuring his tenure, crucial long-term television agreements have been completed, and rules were changed to appoint Paris and Los Angeles hosts for the next two Olympics without competition. Then a small committee was empowered to streamline the process even further, effectively delivering the 2032 Summer Games to Brisbane, Australia, the home nation of the committee’s leader, before any other city could bid.“He would justify that by saying, ‘I think this is the best way to protect the Olympics,’” Pengilly said of Bach. “When that’s your starting point, then you bring yourself into difficulties when stuff like this happens.”The I.O.C. has wrestled with thorny questions about China’s human rights record for years. In 2008, when Beijing hosted the Summer Games, the I.O.C. adopted a public relations posture that the greater scrutiny the Olympics bring would ultimately yield positive changes within Chinese society.Yet since then, the opposite has happened. While in 2008 the focus was largely on China’s policies in Tibet, its government now also faces criticism of its crackdown on political freedoms in Hong Kong, the semiautonomous territory, and its repression in the Xinjiang region, where hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslims have been detained in a campaign that the United States has called genocidal.Tarred as complicit in human rights violations, the I.O.C. that once suggested it could change China by giving it the Games has more recently argued that it can control only what happens inside the Olympic bubble.Beijing continues to prepare for the Winter Games. The Yanqing National Sliding Center hosted a recent stop in luge’s World Cup season.Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press“The International Olympic Committee, as a civil nongovernmental organization, is strictly politically neutral at all times,” Bach wrote last year in a column published by The Guardian. “Neither awarding the Games, nor participating, are a political judgment regarding the host country.”Christophe Dubi, the most senior I.O.C. official responsible for the Olympics, insisted human rights clauses were included in its contract with Beijing, though Peng’s case appears to fall outside that agreement.“What is outside the contract is a different story, but we act where we have a contract and there we are very clear,” Dubi told The New York Times this week.“I follow what is going on,” Dubi added, “and am I happy that the I.O.C. is being criticized? No, I am not happy that the I.O.C. is being criticized. I am not happy when I hear and read some of the stories.”Dubi insisted that no subject would be off limits to the news media attending and covering the Games, but whether there will be answers remains unclear. Chinese officials pressed about Peng initially claimed ignorance even as the story drew worldwide attention, and, like the I.O.C., the Chinese government still has not commented on the sexual assault allegations.The Olympic committee’s light-touch response to them, though, may have ensured that nothing will derail the final push toward the opening ceremony in Beijing in less than 100 days.“It does not encroach on anything I’m doing at my level to deliver the Games,” Dubi said. More

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      Peng Shuai’s Accusation Pierced the Privileged Citadel of Chinese Politics

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      Zhang Gaoli was best known as a low-key technocrat. Then a Chinese tennis star’s allegations made him a symbol of a system that bristles against scrutiny.Before Zhang Gaoli was engulfed in accusations that he had sexually assaulted a tennis champion, he seemed to embody the qualities that the Chinese Communist Party prizes in officials: austere, disciplined, and impeccably loyal to the leader of the day.He had climbed steadily from running an oil refinery to a succession of leadership posts along China’s fast-growing coast, avoiding the scandals and controversy that felled other, flashily ambitious politicians. He became known, if for anything, for his monotone impersonality. On entering China’s top leadership, he invited people to search for anything amiss in his behavior. “Stern, low-key, taciturn,” summed up one of the few profiles of him in the Chinese media. His interests, Xinhua news agency said, included books, chess and tennis.Now the allegation from Peng Shuai, the professional tennis player, has cast Mr. Zhang’s private life under a blaze of international attention, making him a symbol of a political system that prizes secrecy and control over open accountability. The allegation raises questions about how far Chinese officials carry their declared ideals of clean-living integrity into their heavily guarded homes.“Zhang epitomized the image of the bland apparatchik that the party has worked hard to cultivate,” said Jude Blanchette, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.Ms. Peng’s account — that Mr. Zhang coerced her into sex during a yearslong, on-off relationship — has not been corroborated. The Chinese authorities’ vigorous efforts to stifle any mention of the matter suggest there is little chance that Mr. Zhang will ever be called to public account, even if that might clear his name. Neither Ms. Peng nor Mr. Zhang have made any public comment since her post appeared.“One would have to imagine, sadly, that in an opaque and patriarchal system of unchecked power these sorts of abuses are not uncommon,” Mr. Blanchette added.China’s Peng Shuai serves against Canada’s Eugenie Bouchard during their women’s singles match at the Australian Open in 2019.Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen Ms. Peng, 35, posted her accusation on the popular social media platform Weibo on the night of Nov. 2, she took readers into the cosseted personal lives of the Communist Party’s elite. In Ms. Peng’s post, addressed to Mr. Zhang, she said the two had met more than a decade earlier when her career was taking off and his was nearing its peak. At the time, she wrote, he was the Communist Party chief of Tianjin, a northern port city, and he told her his political position made it impossible for him to divorce his wife.Mr. Zhang dropped contact with her, the post said, after ascending to the Communist Party’s highest body, the Politburo Standing Committee, a post he held for five years. During this time, he was entrusted with overseeing China’s initial preparations for the 2022 Winter Olympics, which is now being overshadowed by the furor.About three years ago, after stepping down, Mr. Zhang called the head of a tennis academy to summon Ms. Peng to play tennis with him at a party-owned hotel in Beijing, called the Kangming, that plays host to retired officials, according to her post. Later that day, she said, he forced her to have sex in his home. They resumed a relationship, but he insisted it remain furtive. She had to switch cars to be able to enter the government compound where he lives in Beijing, she wrote. He warned her to tell no one, not even her mother. With rarely a word or hair out of place, Mr. Zhang has seemed an unlikely protagonist for a scandal that has rippled around the world. He belongs to a generation of officials who rose after the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, taking on the self-effacing ethos of collective leadership under Hu Jintao, who preceded the country’s current leader, Xi Jinping.Zhang Gaoli, right, then secretary of the Tianjin Communist Party, meeting with Lien Chan, former chairman of Taiwan’s Nationalist Party, during a business forum in Tianjin in 2008. Andy Wong/Associated PressMr. Zhang, who turned 75 the day before Ms. Peng’s post appeared, was born in a fishing village in Fujian Province. According to official accounts, his father died when he was a child. He began studying economics at Xiamen University in Fujian, but his education was cut short by the Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong largely shut down university classes.In 1970, he was assigned to work at oil fields in southern China, where he first heaved bags of cement, according to official profiles.Within years, he climbed into management. As Deng Xiaoping and other leaders shepherded China into an era of market reforms, Mr. Zhang became one of those officials whose economic expertise and smattering of higher education marked them for promotion. He perfected the methodical, button-down manner of a cadre who had submerged his life in the party hierarchy.In this handout photo, members of the Politburo Standing Committee, including Zhang Gaoli, far left, attend a meeting of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in Beijing in 2016.Li Xueren/Xinhua, via Associated PressHe served as the party leader of Shenzhen, the city next to Hong Kong that Deng promoted as a showpiece of China’s newfound commercial dynamism. He won the favor of Deng’s successor, Jiang Zemin, and by the early 2000s was put in charge of Shandong, a province crowded with ports and factories.In 2007, he was promoted to oversee Tianjin, the provincial-level port whose fortunes had flagged while other coastal areas boomed. Mr. Zhang pushed plans to convert a drab industrial area of Tianjin into a modern business precinct — a “new Manhattan” — that would attract multinationals and wealthy residents. That project has faltered under debt and inflated expectations, but Mr. Zhang moved upward into the central leadership in 2012. He became executive vice premier: in effect, China’s deputy prime minister.Understand the Disappearance of Peng ShuaiCard 1 of 5Where is Peng Shuai? More

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      Do Sports Still Need China?

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      Global outrage, broken contracts and shifting politics could change the calculus for leagues and teams that once raced to do business in China.The rewards for international sports leagues and organizations are plain: lucrative broadcast deals, bountiful sponsorship opportunities, millions of new consumers.The risks are obvious, too: the compromising of values, the public relations nightmares, the general atmosphere of opacity.For years, they have surveyed the Chinese market, measured these factors and come up with the same basic math: that the benefits of doing business there outweighed the possible downsides. The N.B.A. might blunder into a humbling political crisis based on a single tweet, and rich contracts might vanish into thin air overnight, but China, the thinking went, was a potential gold mine. And for that reason leagues, teams, governing bodies and athletes contorted themselves for any chance to tap into it.But recent events may have changed that thinking for good, and raised a new question: Is doing business in China still worth it?The sports world received a hint last week of a changing dynamic when the WTA — one of many organizations that have worked aggressively over the last decade to establish a foothold in the Chinese market — threatened to stop doing business there altogether if the government failed to confirm the safety of Peng Shuai. Peng, a top women’s tennis player once hailed by state media as “our Chinese princess,” disappeared from public life recently after accusing a prominent former government official of sexual assault.The WTA’s threat was remarkable not only for its reasoning, but for its rarity.WTA Tour officials, fellow players and human rights groups spoke up for Peng Shuai after China tried to censor her accusations of sexual abuse.Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesBut as China’s president, Xi Jinping, governs through an increasingly heavy-handed personal worldview, and as China’s aggressive approach to geopolitics and its record on human rights make the country, and those who do business there, a growing target for a chorus of critics and activists, sports leagues and organizations may soon be forced to re-evaluate their longstanding assumptions.That sort of direct confrontation is already taking place elsewhere: Lawmakers in the European Union recently called for stronger ties with Taiwan, an island China claims as its territory, only months after European officials blocked a landmark commercial agreement over human rights concerns and labeled China a “totalitarian threat.”For most sports organizations, the WTA’s position remains an outlier. Sports organizations with multimillion-dollar partnerships in China — whether the N.B.A., England’s Premier League, Formula 1 auto racing or the International Olympic Committee — have mostly brushed aside concerns.Some partners have acquiesced at times to China’s various demands. A few have issued humbling apologies. The I.O.C., in perhaps the most notable example, has seemed to go out of its way to avoid angering China, even as Peng, a former Olympian, went missing.But an evolving public opinion may get harder for sports organizations to ignore. A report this year from the Pew Research Center, for instance, found that 67 percent of Americans had negative feelings toward China, up from 46 percent in 2018. Similar shifts have occurred in other Western democracies.Mark Dreyer, a sports analyst for China Sports Insider, based in Beijing, said the WTA’s standoff with China represented an escalation in the “them or us” mentality that appeared to be forming between China and its Western rivals.The threat from the WTA, then, could serve as a sign of showdowns to come, in which case, Dreyer said, China could lose out.“Frankly, China is a big market, but the rest of the world is still bigger,” he said. “And if people have to choose, they’re not going to choose China.”To some experts, then, the WTA’s extraordinary decision to confront China head-on might actually signal a turning point, rather than an aberration.“The calculation is one part political, one part moral, one part economic,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of international sports business at Emlyon Business School in Lyon, France. He said that the WTA’s dispute with China reflected the “red line” growing between the country and many of its Western counterparts, with the sides seeming more entrenched in diverging sociopolitical ideologies.Some sports organizations are deepening their ties to China. Formula 1, for example, just extended its contract for the Chinese Grand Prix, keeping the race in Shanghai through 2025.Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“I think we are rapidly heading toward the kind of terrain where organizations, businesses, and sponsors will be forced to choose one side or another,” Chadwick added.The WTA’s own about-face was stark. Only three years ago, the organization was heralding a deal that made Shenzhen, China, the new home of its tour finals for a decade starting in 2019, accepting promises of a new stadium and a whopping $14 million annual prize pool. In 2019, just before the pandemic, the WTA held nine tournaments in China.Fast forward to last week, when Steve Simon, the WTA’s chief executive, said in an interview with The New York Times that if China did not agree to an independent inquiry of Peng’s claims, that the tour would be willing to cease operations in the country.“There are too many decisions being made today that aren’t based on what is simply right and wrong,” Simon said. “And this is the right thing to do, 100 percent.”The language raised eyebrows around the sports world.“They are not the first ones to have had a run-in with China,” Zhe Ji, the director of Red Lantern, a sports marketing company that does work in China, said about the WTA. “But I haven’t seen anybody else come out with as strong a wording as that.”The run-ins have proliferated in only the last few years.The N.B.A., for instance, was seen as a pioneer when it played its first games in China in 2004, including a game featuring Yao Ming, the Chinese star for the Houston Rockets. The ensuing years brought prosperity for the league there, and relative peace. It was praised for its patient, culturally sensitive approach to building there. Then, in 2019, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Rockets at the time, tweeted in support of pro-democracy protests taking place in Hong Kong, and in the blink of an eye a relationship that had developed over several years imploded.Merchandise for the Rockets — China’s favorite team in China’s favorite sports league — was removed from stores, and the team’s games were no longer broadcast on television. Fans took to Chinese social media to attack the league. Then, when the N.B.A. issued what was widely taken as an apology, it sparked an almost equally robust wave of criticism back home. (The N.B.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.)“The NBA should have anticipated the challenges of doing business in a country run by a repressive single party government, including by being prepared to stand in strong defense of the freedom of expression of its employees, players, and affiliates across the globe,” read a letter sent to the league by a bipartisan group of United States lawmakers.The N.B.A. saw its brand battered in China and at home after a team executive waded into Chinese politics on Twitter.Tyrone Siu/ReutersThe letter’s signees — a cross-party group that included Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a Democrat, and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican — accused the N.B.A. of compromising American values and effectively supporting Chinese propaganda.“If you’re angering both sides, it means there is no middle ground, which I think was significant,” said Dreyer, the Beijing-based sports analyst.Like other observers, Dreyer suggested the WTA’s stance was potentially game-changing. But he noted, too, that it was possibly easier for the WTA to defy China than it had been for, say, the N.B.A., for two reasons.First, because the pandemic had already forced the WTA to cancel its events in China for the near future, the tour was not necessarily forfeiting big sums of money in the immediate term. (Severing ties with China permanently would of course require the WTA Tour to replace tens of millions of dollars in revenue and prize money.) Second, because China has essentially erased any mention of Peng and the ensuing international outcry from its news and social media, the WTA’s brand may not take much of a hit there. Many in China simply do not know about Peng, or the WTA’s response.“With the N.B.A., they were burning jerseys,” Dreyer said. “You don’t have that reaction against tennis.”To be sure, big sports leagues that have deep, longstanding interests in China, barring some extreme turn of events, will not exit the market any time soon. And some organizations are still going all-in.The I.O.C., which will stage the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, has tuned out any and all calls from critics for the organization to make some statement about China’s human rights abuses, including the treatment of religious minorities in the country’s western regions.The Beijing Olympics marked the start of its 100-days-out countdown on Wednesday.Andrea Verdelli/Getty ImagesFormula 1 this month announced that it had signed a deal to continue the Chinese Grand Prix, an annual race in Shanghai, through 2025, and the Premier League appears to have patched over a crisis that began when a top player infuriated China by criticizing its human rights record.Some in the industry, though, have already noticed a change, a slight cooling, among other companies pondering business in the sports market there.“With increased political tension and the complications of doing business in China, I’ve seen more companies focus back on Europe and the U.S., where the reward may not be as large but the risk is much less,” said Lisa Delpy Neirotti, an international sports marketing consultant and director of the sports management master’s program at George Washington University.That dynamic has been vivid in European soccer, which had collectively seemed to view China as a sort of El Dorado five years ago, but now seems to be coming to terms with reality after a series of disappointments. In Italy, Inter Milan, one of that country’s most storied clubs, is in a tailspin after its Chinese owner, Suning, a consumer goods company, became engulfed in a major financial crisis. The team has been forced to sell player contracts to meet its payroll.In England, the Premier League remains in litigation with a broadcast partner that failed to pay up after signing a record-breaking television deal to broadcast games in China. A new partner is paying a fraction of the previous agreement, leaving some clubs disillusioned.Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva in Shanghai in 2019. The Premier League had to find a new television partner in China after a record-setting deal collapsed.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Over the last five years there had been a perception in the West that China is there for the taking — there’s lots of money, economic growth is strong, a growing middle class, disposal income, and we can go feast on this,” Chadwick said. “What has happened for some sports organizations in the West is that they have not found China as lucrative as they imagined, and they have also found China incredibly difficult to do business with.”The difficulties appear to be deepening.Half a decade ago, the Chinese government, emboldened about sports after hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, announced plans to create an $800 billion domestic sports industry, the largest in the world. That captured the attention of Western sports organizations.What many organizations did not anticipate, though, were the peculiarities of the Chinese business landscape, the extent to which politics is woven through all aspects of China’s economy, and the growing spirit of nationalism under its increasingly autocratic president, Xi.“I absolutely think over the long term that major sporting events will be hesitant moving forward to schedule out in China right now,” said Thomas A. Baker III, a sports management professor at the University of Georgia who has done extensive work in China. “The China that welcomed the world in 2008 is not the same China that people are doing business with in 2021.”Tariq Panja More