Peng Shuai is one of the most famous female tennis players in the world. On November 2 she accused 75-year old Zhang, a former leader within the Chinese Communist party, of pressuring her into sex. Peng claimed the assault occurred after Zhang invited her to play tennis with him and his wife. She posted this on social media, and within hours, her post was taken down. Days later, Peng Shuai disappeared. She has not been seen in public since.
A post, presumably of Peng recanting the charges she originally made, was forthcoming, but most experts feel it is not Peng, or that she is being forced to make the statement. The world tennis association is trying to figure out what to do. On December 1 the WTA suspended all tournaments in China over the country's censorship and failure to investigate the allegations. The WTA said they cannot in good conscience send more WTA players to a country capable of the censorship it's applying to Peng.
Is this a political issue or a sports issue? Of course it is both. Tennis is big business throughout the world, and China stands to lose millions, maybe billions of dollars over the incident. However, control of content on social media is of utmost importance to the Chinese. Everything is subject to censorship, and if you're famous, even more so.
I worry about our censorship of social media. There's a fine line between freedom of expression and speech, and censorship. Blatant falsehoods should be removed and allegations should be investigated. This is an ongoing problem for the free world, and it's getting harder everyday to control. We'll just have to wait and see what happens to Peng Shuai next. Hopefully world pressure will force the Chinese to release Peng. I'm not hopeful that this will occur.
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