- The disappearance of the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai has caused a great deal of excitement in the sports world.
- Time and again, people in China who dared to leave Xi Jinping’s party line disappear. The practice even has a legal basis.
- Nevertheless, China is allowed to host the Winter Olympics in three months – and is clearly pursuing propaganda goals. And the IOC has to be careful not to get pulled in front of the cart for this.
Just a few months before the Winter Olympics are held in China, the case of tennis player Peng Shuai is causing waves. The 35-year-old had accused the former Chinese Vice Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli of sexual abuse in early November 2021 and then disappeared.
The tennis world has been in a state of excitement ever since. Even an alleged email from Peng Shuai to WTA boss Steve Simon did not change anything. Rather the opposite. “I find it hard to believe that Peng Shuai actually wrote this email that we received,” said Simon, demanding “independent and verifiable evidence” that Peng Shuai is fine. China has now supposedly provided: After several allegedly current recordings, which Peng Shuai showed at a tennis tournament, among other things, but could not be verified, IOC President Thomas Bach has now made a video call with the athlete. She said that she was safe.
For weeks the world has been worried about the whereabouts of the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai. She accuses a high official of sexual abuse. During a video contact with IOC President Thomas Bach, Shuai expresses a wish.
Klein: “Unclear whether Peng Shuai is safe”
Maximilian Klein, who is responsible for international sports policy at Deutsche Athleten eV, is not convinced in the least. He criticized the IOC sharply in relation to our editorial team: The statement made after the phone call did not allow Peng Shuai to speak directly, nor did it mention that Peng Shua had been missing for three weeks and had previously raised allegations of abuse against a high-ranking politician. Klein continues: “So it remains unclear whether Peng Shuai is actually free and safe, whether she can make free decisions and express herself free from coercion and censorship.” Klein believes that the IOC must insist on an independent investigation of the allegations and otherwise take an example from the WTA and reserve the right to economic consequences.
China is systematically – and legally protected – people disappearing
The fact that a high-ranking athlete like Peng Shuai simply disappears is not surprising even for Klein. It is not the first time that people in China who have dared to express opinions that differ from the party line or who somehow step out of the communist ranks are disappearing in China. Journalists critical of the system, such as Li Zehua, who wanted to report independently on the region of origin of the coronavirus Wuhan, keep disappearing. Stars and starlets like the actor Zhao Wei have also disappeared. They often reappear months later and indulge in praise for the Communist People’s Republic of China. Successful re-education.
At the end of 2020, Alibaba founder Jack Ma even disappeared after criticizing the Chinese economic system. He reappeared three months later, where he was during his disappearance, but Ma is silent about that.
Legal basis for enforced disappearance
Since 2019, the “disappearance” has had a legal basis in China. The arbitrary and secret detention is called “Liuzhi” and allows the authorities “a longer term of detention without contact with the outside world,” writes Amnesty International in its 2019 China Report. This increased the risk of “torture and other ill-treatment for those detained as well as being forced into ‘confessions’ “. It can be assumed that Peng Shuai has just fallen victim to “Liuzhi”.
And that three months before the Winter Olympics in China.
Sport has a special place in China
Athletes like Peng Shuai play a very special role in authoritarian regimes. At international appearances such as the Olympic Games, they are representatives of their country, if they win medals, they also win them for the regime. And China is doing a lot to ensure that the country and ruler Xi Jinping can look forward to sporting successes as often as possible. At both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, only gold counts, and every effort is made towards this. And if the country is not yet as successful in a sport as Xi Jinping would like to see, then a lot of money is taken into hand. Football, for example, can sing a song about this.
“Sporting successes should serve as evidence of how successful the economic and opening-up policy that China has been pursuing since 1980”, explained the Shanghai-based management consultant Dr. Dr. Andreas Tank in conversation with our editorial team in 2017. This statement can still be used today.
Successful athletes are therefore gladly courted, there are gifts, financial support – as long as success is there and as long as everyone just smiles nicely, thanks the People’s Republic and keeps their possibly divergent political opinions to themselves.
It is all the more difficult for athletes to free themselves from the constraints of the government. Often times, she and her family are completely dependent on their favor. Rarely do they make it to international fame and real financial independence. And even then, they are not immune to intervention. See Peng Shuai. “In a system like China, Peng Shuai took on enormous risks and dangers and put her life in danger,” explains Klein from the German Athletes Association and have experienced abuse. “
Shitstorms from the Chinese media are the order of the day
Peng Shuai’s case has an entirely different, broader dimension when it comes to the safety of athletes, with allegations of sexual abuse against a high-ranking politician. But in China even the slightest deviation from the party line can lead to veritable shit storms through the Chinese state media. For example, sports shooter Yang Qian was insulted for showing her Nike shoe collection on the Weibo blog portal – on which, by the way, Peng Shuai also made her allegations public. Because Nike has been a non grata company in the People’s Republic since the sports giant publicly spoke out against forced labor and no longer wants to purchase cotton from Xinjiang, where China is systematically suppressing and exploiting Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. In the already heavily censored social media, a nationalist mob stirs up such excesses of cultivated national pride. It was the same at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. According to “TAZ”, after losing the table tennis finals in mixed doubles against Japan, the neighboring country was openly hounded. Every Chinese must “keep the blood revenge against Japan in mind,” was read on social media, for example.
China doesn’t believe in freedom of the press
There are still a few weeks until the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing start, but China’s propaganda machine is already running and this also includes making possible negative reporting from abroad, if it cannot be completely avoided, as difficult as possible. Foreign journalists are therefore not even informed about possible dates or invited to them. According to “tagesschau.de”, a journalist who works for an international broadcaster reports that he was insulted and threatened by the organizer of the press conference on the phone after a critical contribution. In Reporters Without Borders’ freedom of press ranking, China ranks 177th out of 180.
And China no longer even tries to cover up such incidents. And then we would be back at Peng Shuai. Because intimidation and propaganda happen openly and with increased arrogance, says Mareike Ohlberg from the German Marshall Fund, in her analysis of the alleged email from Peng Shuai to the head of the WTA. She sees the mail as a show of force by the Chinese government, because not even the Chinese people would believe that Peng Shuai wrote the mail himself. The tweet of the international Chinese state television, however, is a good example of the amalgamation of incompetence and authoritarian hubris in China’s official communication.
A queasy feeling in athletes
The Winter Olympics will start in Beijing on February 4th, and many athletes will – also in view of the events surrounding Peng Shuai – travel to a country that has so little interest in freedom of expression with a queasy feeling in their stomachs. Many athletes are made aware of the human rights and political situation in the country. With a view to the upcoming Winter Games, organized sport must now prove that it can guarantee the protection and safety of the athletes, Klein believes. “How are they protected from surveillance? Can their integrity be ensured? How is their freedom of expression and speech guaranteed, especially if they want to express themselves critically? The organizers should be prepared for all scenarios.” The IOC naturally has a very special role to play in this. A role that the committee headed by Thomas Bach has unfortunately neglected too often: human rights due diligence.
In the case of Peng Shuai, Klein sees the IOC falling back into old patterns and it becomes clear: “The IOC must be careful not to allow itself to be harnessed for Chinese propaganda purposes with its silence and this ignorance.”
Sources:
- Conversation with Maximilian Klein from the Deutsche Athleten eV
- “NZZ”: China is making a tennis star disappear
- Amnesty International: Report China 2019
- “Sueddeutsche.de”: China is fighting for its image
- “Deutschlandfunk.de”: After reports about coronavirus: Another critical journalist in China disappeared
- “Taz.de”: The anger of the little pinks
- “Tagesschau.de”: Before the winter games in Beijing: journalists not wanted
- Reporters Without Borders: China
- dpa
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The tennis world is troubled. Peng Shuai has not been seen publicly since allegations of sexual assault by a top politician in China. A statement under her name circulated by state media now only adds to concerns.
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