The Peng Shuai Affair

[theprestige]

What do you make of this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59426312

"A man claiming to be an associate of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has accused the head of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) of ignoring an email from her.

Ding Li tweeted a screenshot of mail he claims she wrote to WTA chief Steve Simon asking not to be "disturbed"."

"He said Ms Peng had sent an email to Mr Simon, in which she said: "At the moment I do not want to be disturbed, and especially [can you] not hype up my personal affairs. I hope to live quietly. Thank you again for your concern.""

All of your posts seem to premised on assuming the Chinese government is an honest broker, that does not unduly interfere in the public lives of its free citizens. This isn't really a plausible starting assumption for a lot of people who pay attention to China.

Why do you think we should give China, and not Peng Shuai, the initial benefit of the doubt in this?

When someone attempts the MDC, we don't assume a priori that they're actually achieving a paranormal results. Instead, we make note of all the opportunities they've had to control the narrative, and all the techniques by which they could achieve the result through trickery and fraud.

 

[Ziggurat]

You want to talk about irrelevant....this person is irrelevant to a lot of things.

But not to the topic of the thread. If you think the thread is irrelevant, then don’t participate. It’s really that simple.

 

[Orphia Nay]

All of your posts seem to premised on assuming the Chinese government is an honest broker

The rest of your post is irrelevant because I do not assume anything.

 

[Orphia Nay]

The man apparently doesn't actually have any verifiable association with Peng, so until one is found he can be safely ignored.

There are photos of him with her on his twitter account.

https://twitter.com/li_ding1

 

[BobTheCoward]

But not to the topic of the thread. If you think the thread is irrelevant, then don’t participate. It’s really that simple.

I misinterpreted what you were getting at when you described yourself as irrelevant. Nevermind then.

(As an aside, I think everything I do with my life is ultimately irrelevant).

 

[Ziggurat]

There are photos of him with her on his twitter account.

https://twitter.com/li_ding1

Twitter is blocked in China. If this guy has a twitter account, then he's a CCP shill. He may well know Peng, but he's a shill none the less.

 

[Checkmite]

Twitter is blocked in China. If this guy has a twitter account, then he's a CCP shill. He may well know Peng, but he's a shill none the less.

This account's tweet history is fascinating.

2 tweets in 2012.

1 in 2017.

1 on February 5, 2019.

And then suddenly on November 18 of this year it wakes up and begins tweeting solely about Peng Shuai. All of the photos showing him with Peng were posted a week ago, literally on the same day.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Global Times tweeted
@globaltimesnews

China state-affiliated media
WTA’s coercion has deprived Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai of freedom of expression, forcing her to complain in accordance with the imagination and expectations of Western public opinion, fabricating that she has lost her freedom: Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin

 

[LondonJohn]

Interesting gambit: blaming the WTA's "coercion" for what's happening....

Anyhow, I guess most people who are following this story have seen that the WTA announced yesterday that it's suspending all of its China-based tournaments for 2022:

https://www.wtatennis.com/news/2384...ta-s-decision-to-suspend-tournaments-in-china

I'm not sure I wholly agree with Simon's lead reason - that he would have concerns for the safety of female tour players if they went to play tournaments in China; and I'm interested as to why the WTA chose to put that reason at the top of the list. For me, the concerns about Peng are easily reason enough to pull the plug on China tournaments: Peng is still a member of the WTA Tour (albeit she was inactive for most of the 2021 season), and is a long-standing member of the tour. The WTA therefore most certainly has a duty of care to her, so this alone should have provided all the justification Simon needed for suspending the China swing in '22.

Note also that the word being used throughout is "suspend" rather than "cancel". In 2019 (the last year that serves as a comparator) there was a prestigious (and lucrative, both to China and to the Tour) WTA Tour event in Shenzhen right at the start of January, and a slew of rich China-based tourneys after the US Open - including the marquee WTA Finals. I believe the pre-Peng intention was to replicate this 2019 schedule pretty much in its entirety in 2022.

If so, it's hard to imagine that the pre-Aus-Open Shenzhen tournament in January will go ahead, even if the Peng situation gets resolved satisfactorily this side of Christmas. But the Autumn (Fall) China tournaments are obviously still up for grabs, and this would appear to be the carrot and stick the WTA is trying to use here: "Allow Peng to leave freely and convince us of her safety, and we'll play all those lucrative post-US-Open tournaments in your country as planned; keep the situation as it currently is, and wave goodbye to all those tournaments for next year and potentially years to come."

 

[theprestige]

Twitter is blocked in China. If this guy has a twitter account, then he's a CCP shill. He may well know Peng, but he's a shill none the less.

This account's tweet history is fascinating.

2 tweets in 2012.

1 in 2017.

1 on February 5, 2019.

And then suddenly on November 18 of this year it wakes up and begins tweeting solely about Peng Shuai. All of the photos showing him with Peng were posted a week ago, literally on the same day.

Global Times tweeted
@globaltimesnews

China state-affiliated media
WTA’s coercion has deprived Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai of freedom of expression, forcing her to complain in accordance with the imagination and expectations of Western public opinion, fabricating that she has lost her freedom: Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin

This right here is why I don't give the Chinese government the benefit of the doubt.

 

[LondonJohn]

This right here is why I don't give the Chinese government the benefit of the doubt.

I don't really think anyone does, particularly wrt this matter.

For instance, it's a big blow to the WTA Tour - not just to China - if it ends up cancelling the several lucrative tournaments it had planned to hold in PRC in 2022. It'll lose the Tour a lot of event money, a lot of sponsorship/advertising money, a lot of TV-rights money, and a lot of goodwill among the rank-and-file Chinese public.

The WTA, in keeping with many of the world's major sports administrators, is desperate to get a firm foothold in China and to grow interest in the sport there. The sheer numbers (overall-population-wise, and mid/high-affluent-population-wise) are breathtaking as a potential growth opportunity, and the feeling is that you've got to get in on things now so that you can most effectively ride the wave of Chinese economic growth & prosperity to your own advantage.

So it will have been an extremely tough and costly decision for the WTA when it announced the suspension of its China tournaments in 2022. As I said before, my feeling is that the PRC leadership really didn't think the WTA would take such action (for the very reason that the WTA stands to lose a lot by doing so). The WTA's decision is about as clear a signal as can be that they don't trust the China leadership on the Peng situation.

 

[Graham2001]

Bari Weiss using the affair to shame American firms investing in China.

China is ruled by an increasingly totalitarian regime that uses technology to spy on its citizens. It is, at this moment, carrying out a genocide against its Uyghur Muslim population. It regularly vanishes people who dare to dissent. And it wants to control the terms of debate, politics and business worldwide.


Having disappeared doctors and scientists who tried to blow the whistle on Covid-19, the Chinese Communist Party has now targeted Peng Shuai, a tennis star who accused a former top Chinese government official of sexual assault. “Even if it is like an egg hitting a rock, or if I am like a moth drawn to the flame, inviting self-destruction, I will tell the truth about you,” she wrote on the social media platform Weibo. Then her message disappeared. And so did she.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/womens-tennis-has-balls-does-wall

 

[trustbutverify]

Global Times tweeted
@globaltimesnews

China state-affiliated media
WTA’s coercion has deprived Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai of freedom of expression, forcing her to complain in accordance with the imagination and expectations of Western public opinion, fabricating that she has lost her freedom: Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin

The WTA forced Peng to lie about losing her freedom? How?

 

[theprestige]

The WTA forced Peng to lie about losing her freedom? How?

I read it as them saying she felt pressured to make up stories about being oppressed, for the titillation of western audiences who expect that sort of thing, and will withhold favors if they don't get it. I wouldn't be surprised if this is just a pro forma English translation of a boilerplate message intended for a Chinese audience.

 

[trustbutverify]

I read it as them saying she felt pressured to make up stories about being oppressed, for the titillation of western audiences who expect that sort of thing, and will withhold favors if they don't get it. I wouldn't be surprised if this is just a pro forma English translation of a boilerplate message intended for a Chinese audience.

I'd say she's exponentially more motivated to satisfy the CCP than the WTA and western audiences.

 

[trustbutverify]

From activist Peter Dahlin:

With the NGO Safeguard Defenders, I have been paying very close attention to the worrying situation of Peng Shuai in the People’s Republic of China. Peng has been disappeared, at least temporarily, only to appear in a series of ever-stranger and rather obviously staged appearances. This practice is eerily similar to a recurrent CCP tactic of stage-managed (TV) appearances, where victims are paraded and forced to perform by the police, often in an effort to counter international criticism.

While you may not have been fully aware of this practice at the outset of Peng’s disappearance, the behaviour of the IOC has taken a serious turn for the worse following your December 2 press release on a second closed-door video-call with Peng.

Contrary to your latest statements, the actions of the IOC are directly putting Peng at greater risk. If this continued error is indeed due to ignorance, this open letter will at least be one step to remedy such lack of knowledge, information, and understanding.

The practice of stage-managed appearances is most often referred to as forced televised confessions, though recently PRC police will more often resort to posting such videos on their social media channels or have newspapers carry them on their websites. In every scenario, the purpose remains the same: to either attack the person her- or himself, or to counter international criticism.

 

[theprestige]

I'd say she's exponentially more motivated to satisfy the CCP than the WTA and western audiences.

Well yeah. You weren't asking by what mechanism the WTA has forced her to lie, were you? Because I think we all know the CCP has no such mechanism in mind, and that their claim is entirely bogus.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Interesting article in WIRED about the Peng Shuai affair.

"Peng Shuai’s censorship over Chinese social media continues, with topics based on her name and story still banned on Weibo and WeChat publishing platforms. Though the IOC feels confident that she is safe, the systemic changes of the acts of censorship continue to reverberate online, for her and for other individuals with #MeToo stories bursting at the seams."

https://www.wired.com/story/peng-shuai-censorship-china/

It discusses China's censorship and other vocal Chinese women who were censored.

"Like Zhou, feminist activist Lü Pin was not left unscathed by the sudden shutdown of Feminist Voices, the organization she cofounded. The group’s closure demonstrates that Chinese censors may keep working in perpetuity while the communications tools of activists and people with stories against the grain, like Peng, have their online existence hang by a thread. “Because what the government does is to isolate us from one another,” the activist explains, “therefore, we must connect with each other, and moreover, we must create and spread the alternative knowledge of resistance. This is what feminism is good at, after all.”"

 

[Ziggurat]

The WTA, in keeping with many of the world's major sports administrators, is desperate to get a firm foothold in China and to grow interest in the sport there. The sheer numbers (overall-population-wise, and mid/high-affluent-population-wise) are breathtaking as a potential growth opportunity, and the feeling is that you've got to get in on things now so that you can most effectively ride the wave of Chinese economic growth & prosperity to your own advantage.

So it will have been an extremely tough and costly decision for the WTA when it announced the suspension of its China tournaments in 2022. As I said before, my feeling is that the PRC leadership really didn't think the WTA would take such action (for the very reason that the WTA stands to lose a lot by doing so). The WTA's decision is about as clear a signal as can be that they don't trust the China leadership on the Peng situation.

I wonder about this, though. Not that you're wrong about the desire for profiting from a growing Chinese market, but about whether the growth opportunities are really there for foreign companies. China cannot be trusted. Any time you invest in china, you're taking a big risk. Anything and everything within China can simply be co-opted or even seized by the Chinese government if it so chooses. Hollywood has already been burned by this. They bend to Chinese censors, and they still get shafted. And now the Chinese box office is dominated by domestically produced movies. The Chinese tennis market may be growing, but even if they wanted to play by the CCP's rules, the WTA might still end up with a smaller and smaller piece of that pie.

 

[Graham2001]

It has been put down the Memory Hole...

Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has said she never accused anyone of sexually assaulting her, and that a social media post she had made early last month had been misunderstood.


Peng's well-being has become a matter of concern among the global tennis community and human rights groups when she appeared to allege a former Chinese vice-premier, Zhang Gaoli, had sexually assaulted her in the past.

https://au.sports.yahoo.com/peng-never-made-sex-assault-184516824.html