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It’s basically a dead issue…Time to give up and realize you’re dealing with an authoritarian government.
@Uruguay1956
• Last weekend, I noted on X that, as the China swing winds down, it’s been four years since Peng Shuai disappeared from public view after accusing a senior Communist Party official of sexual assault. And it became clear that I am not alone in thinking that this saga—and the scant attention it now gets, despite the absence of absolute clarity or resolution—still doesn’t sit right.
This is one of the stranger, more distressing stories I’ve covered—an overlap of sports, social issues, geopolitics and capitalism. Moral courage followed by moral abdication. Ultimately, a victory for money over principle.
In a perfect world, any concern is ill-founded, and all the discomfort and unseemliness become moot. Peng appears. She presents the trophy (absent minders from the CCP) at a Chinese WTA event. She takes to social media—as she used to, quite often—and posts photos of her dogs, or about the cacio e pepe she perfected, or a spa day. Maybe she even coaches a junior player or does some tennis broadcasting. We exhale, confident that she is fine and free. And, reassured, everyone gets back to their lives.
But that has not happened.
Let’s play out the timeline of her disappearance and note how absurd and chilling this case is. Imagine if this were an athlete in another sport under the same set of circumstances and broken norms. Here goes:
• Nearly four years ago, on Nov. 2, 2021, Peng—well known, well regarded, popular on social media and known for being outspoken—posted a lengthy account of an alleged sexual assault, committed by a higher-ranking member of the national government. The WTA player’s 1000-plus-word essay, with names, dates, receipts and metaphors posted to Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, was swiftly deleted.
• The WTA, rightly and responsibly, demanded of China that Peng Shuai ought “to be heard, not censored” and a full, fair and transparent investigation.
• China didn’t respond to this demand.
• Peng walked back her comments, citing a “huge misunderstanding.”
• A real signifier of authoritarianism is that there are few references to Peng on the Chinese internet (the Great Firewall of China, it’s called). Enter “Peng Shuai” into a search engine in China, and it’s like entering “Tiananmen Square.” There is very little information available.
• The WTA, rightfully skeptical and concerned, announced it had “suspended” its business from China in December 2021.
• Peng appeared at the 2022 Winter Olympics, though apparently bracketed by minders from the Chinese Communist Party.
Note that China’s erasure of perceived internal troublemakers, even high-profile ones, is well-documented. Meng Hongwei, a former head of Interpol, was detained and then sentenced to 13 years in Chinese prison in 2020. Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo died in detention in 2017. Chinese billionaire Jack Ma criticized Chinese financial regulators in 2020 and then “disappeared” only to reappear.
• Overexposed in China to begin with, the WTA’s exodus caused a massive loss of revenue and, consequently, a considerable loss of the steel in its spine. The ATP offered little support beyond rhetoric, and no other sports league joined in the WTA’s stand.
• Putting profits before principle, in April 2023, the WTA sheepishly announced it would return to China. (Albeit without a home for its year-end event, which has been held in Shenzhen and, before the COVID-19 shutdown, was the WTA’s biggest piece of business.) “We have been in touch with people close to Peng and are assured she is living safely with her family in Beijing,” the WTA said in the statement.
• Yes, women’s tennis did what countless other brands have done and continue to do. Namely, holding their nose and continuing trade in the world’s most populous country, despite everything that comes with doing business with an autocracy. (The difference, of course: None of the other brands took a stance, received international acclaim and then retreated.)
• Not only is the WTA back, but the ATP never left. And the Billie Jean King Cup—a women’s tennis competition whose eponym is a sports treasure synonymous with activism, moral courage, equality, feminism, truth-to-power social justice—is now held in Shenzhen.
• Looking back at my notes and texts from the time, a prominent WTA figure suggested that the tour simply acted out of fiduciary duty, not moral duty. That’s a fair analysis. But it seems to me the WTA can’t have it both ways. If it is simply a business selling a product (women’s tennis)—as Apple does AirPods or Starbucks does frappuccinos—that’s fine. But then don’t position yourself as a movement. If you want to “rally the world” or proclaim “strong is beautiful," you can’t abandon principles (and, more critically, a player/member) with a shrug when your balance sheets are inconvenienced.
• Meanwhile, there is little to no sign of Peng. Not on social media. Not in public. Not in another country. If you were the WTA and had to swallow this moral embarrassment, wouldn’t your first move be recruiting Peng to be one of those figurehead tournament directors or trotting her out as a trophy presenter? If you were Peng, seeking to extinguish concern, wouldn’t you take pains to post occasional updates, suggesting you have moved on, and are not living under duress, etc.?
Imagine a parallel situation in another sector. A Microsoft executive, an NBA player or a commercial airline pilot writes a cri de coeur alleging mistreatment in Freedonia by a high-ranking government official. And then, for all intents and purposes, they are scrubbed from social media, and their public presence and profile are greatly diminished. The company demands answers from Freedonia and gets none. They pull their business from Freedonia. Then they realize the extent of the financial blow and return. Yet the status of the figure in the center of this remains nebulous at best. And four years on, no one much minds.
Again, in a best-case scenario, those of us harboring concerns are proven wrong. Peng emerges, playing in a tennis legends event, living in Taiwan, or back on social media, or simply appears (in the absence of party minders) to say she’s living her best life and there’s nothing to see here.
But until then, who is comfortable with this?
On a happier, China-based note, there was a lot of chatter about the Shanghai results, and Valentin Vacherot beating his first cousin, Arthur Rinderknech, in the final. This is one of the great tennis stories of 2025, with many nods to so many of tennis’s virtues. Five quick thoughts:
- All credit to Vacherot. Here is a player ranked so deep that he wasn’t eligible for the U.S. qualifying draw. He was fortunate to get into the Shanghai qualifying round. He caught a gear, as they say, qualifying, winning, accumulating confidence, beating Novak Djokovic, and, by the week’s end, won more than $1 million and cracked the top 40.
- Take a gander at Vacherot’s results in 2025 and note how many losses he took to players outside the top 300. Just a few weeks ago, he lost to a player outside the top 800. How awesome that tennis gives players a chance to completely rewrite and overwrite their careers.
- Brad Gilbert made this point first, but Vacherot’s fitness was as extraordinary as his tennis. He spent something like 20 hours on court at this event. When you lose 15 games in the first round of the St. Tropez challenger—as he did last month—it would be easy for motivation to flag. Why am I spending this hour on the treadmill? But last week showed that conditioning matters.
- While he fell short of the title, Rinderknech is now, at 30 years old, at a career-high No. 28—likely seeded for Australia—and has beaten Alexander Zverev (twice), Daniil Medvedev and Ben Shelton in 2025. And he handled the loss so gracefully and graciously.
- College tennis for the win, again. Both cousins played for Texas A&M, and the Aggies’ tennis site has, rightly, feasted on this. When we talk about college tennis as an increasingly popular pathway, Shelton, Emma Navarro, Danielle Collins and even Nuno Borges (ironically, Vacherot’s best win as a pro, before last week) are name-checked. Now, two more names have been added to the list.
During the U.S. Open—when those Serena Williams commercials for a weight-loss shot ran, almost as if on a loop—someone else asked about whether these GLP-1 drugs would be permitted under anti-doping.
• From the ITIA:
“In terms of the weight loss drugs—semaglutides, appetite suppressants— this is something WADA is monitoring. Currently, the substances themselves are not on the prohibited list but on WADA’s ‘watch list’ so may well be at some point depending if they feel it meets their criteria.”
Shots
• From the International Tennis Writers’ Association: “Reg Brace, the last of a pioneering generation of British tennis writers who lobbied for improved press facilities at Wimbledon that we have indirectly profited from, died this week. He was 95. Reg was tennis correspondent for the Yorkshire Post newspaper from 1958, and carried on writing until his last visit to Wimbledon in 2018. Over the years he contributed to many other tennis publications and ghostwrote a book with Billie Jean King which still sells to this day.”
• Ekaterina Alexandrova broke into the top 10 on the WTA rankings for the first time in her career following an outstanding 12 months on tour.
More Tennis on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Tennis Mailbag: Four Years Later, ‘Where Is Peng Shuai?’ Still Unanswered .
