WTA’s threat to pull out of China over concerns about Peng Shuai shows how the women’s tennis tour has learned to live without one of its biggest markets, but is sure to provoke a backlash from Beijing. Yes, experts say. The former Wimbledon and French Open doubles champion has not been seen in public since Twitter-like Weibo alleged on November 2 that former deputy prime minister Zhang Gaoli forced her to have sex. Peng’s post was swiftly taken down and the allegation removed from China’s tightly controlled internet, but top players including Naomi Osaka, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams have lashed out at her apparent position.
Peng’s sexual assault claims pushed the #MeToo movement to the highest levels of China’s ruling Communist Party for the first time.
The Women’s Tennis Association has sought evidence that the 35-year-old is safe and its president Steve Simon said he could withdraw from China, the world’s second-largest economy.
In a new twist, an email shared on a Twitter account of state broadcaster CGTN – purportedly written by Peng – hit back at the allegations, saying they were “not true” and that he was “resting at home”. and everything is fine”.
This prompted a fresh backlash from Simon, who said the email “only raises my concerns as to his safety and whereabouts” in a country where incommunicado detentions and forced confessions may follow public criticism of senior party figures. Is.
Simon said he struggled to believe the email was authentic and said it was “some kind of staged statement”.
“Whether he was forced to write, someone wrote for him, we don’t know,” Simon told CNN. “But at this point I don’t think there’s any validity to it and we won’t be comfortable until we have a chance to speak with him.”
The widely acclaimed stance of the Florida-based WTA risks angering executives in a lucrative market that has hosted 10 WTA Tour events in 2019, before coronavirus With the pandemic hit, the total prize money was more than $30 million.
Sports Illustrated reported that China is responsible for a third of the WTA’s revenue. Simon told Time magazine it was an exaggeration, but admitted: “We get a lot of revenue from China.”
Result
Recent history shows that the WTA, the worldwide apex body for women’s tennis, has a lot to lose.
“Chinese officials don’t like being told what to do,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of global sport at the Emilyian Business School.
China has a record of freezing sports personalities, teams and organizations critical of Beijing.
Former Arsenal star Mesut Ozil was effectively fired in defense of China’s Uighur Muslim minority and the NBA has not been shown on state broadcaster CCTV since the Houston Rockets’ chief executive opened the door to Hong Kong’s democracy movement more than two years ago. Tweeted his support for
Streaming service Tencent recently stopped showing games involving the Boston Celtics after their player Enes Kanter last month called President Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator” and denounced Beijing’s policies in Tibet.
Chadwick believes the WTA may run a greater risk of upsetting Chinese officials because it is not as financially dependent on the Chinese market as the NBA, which is wildly popular in the country.
Chadwick said the WTA’s first intervention on Sunday, when it called for a “thorough, fair, transparent and uncensored investigation” into Peng’s allegations, appeared to be a “mathematical decision”.
Furthermore, it suggested that the WTA is “not concerned about the effects” of provoking Beijing, he said.
Mark Dreyer, the founder of the China Sports Insider website, believes the cancellation of two-year tour events in China due to the pandemic means the WTA has “learned to live without China”.
“The results of (speaking) today are lower than in the past,” he said.
‘China out of kilos’
With China keeping its borders sealed as part of its zero-Covid strategy, international tennis is unlikely to return to the country any time soon.
Unable to target WTA tournaments on their soil, Chinese authorities may instead block Internet users from commenting on broadcasts of overseas matches, said Chinese tennis blogger Ouyang Wensheng.
At the more extreme end, China could deploy a cocktail of “easing restrictions, easing cases and getting people out,” Ouyang said.
Chadwick said China’s efforts to quell Peng’s allegations clashed with a global sporting – and cultural – discourse that “centers around equal rights for men and women”.
“You could say that the WTA is really pushing for an open door,” he said.
“It is China that is out of kilter with the rest of the world.”
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