On November 2, 2021, she sent her fateful message, in which she claimed to have had a lengthy on-off affair with former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli. It was described at the time as the most serious “Me Too” issue to have emerged from China, as it was the first to involve a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official.
While the 1,600-word post had certain ambiguities, it seemed to suggest that Peng had first become intimate with Gaoli in Tianjin 10 years earlier, and then went on to say that – after several visits to his gated apartment complex in Beijing – their most recent sexual encounter had been coercive.
“That afternoon, I was very afraid,” she wrote. “I didn’t expect it to be like this. I didn’t agree to have sex with you and kept crying that afternoon.” Later in the post, she added that “You played with me, and dumped me when you were done with me.”
Peng’s ‘controlled’ appearances and a China boycott
The post was only visible for around 20 minutes before it was taken down. Soon after that, Peng herself dropped out of contact with the outside world, prompting Steve Simon, the WTA chief executive, to demand a “full, fair and transparent investigation” and to call for China to “end censorship against Peng”. While Peng’s very existence was airbrushed from the Chinese internet, the Weibo network banned the word “wangqiu”, which means tennis.
About a week later, videos and photographs of Peng began to emerge via controlled sources such as the China Open’s Weibo account. She was shown at her home, at a restaurant, and signing oversized tennis balls for children at Beijing’s National Tennis Centre. Yet the apparent controlled nature of the content failed to satisfy anyone beyond Chinese loyalists, and the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai proliferated on social media, with support from leading players including the “big four” of the men’s game: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray.
Behind the scenes, Simon had reached a momentous decision: he would cancel the 10 events staged in China, including the lucrative WTA Finals in Shenzhen, unless a full investigation was carried out, and Peng was allowed to communicate directly with Simon and his team.