The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing is meant to showcase world-class athletes. Instead, the world is getting a sickening glimpse into the ...
The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing is meant to showcase world-class athletes.
Instead, the world is getting a sickening glimpse into the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party and its efforts to paper over whatever reflects poorly on the regime.
It’s difficult for China to hide its sins while under the white-hot spotlight brought on by the games, and that includes the mysterious recent disappearance and reappearance of the three-time Olympic Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai.
On Nov. 2, Peng used a social media post to accuse vice-premier of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhang Gaoli, of forcing her to have sex with him in a relationship that lasted for years, ABC News reported. The social media post was quickly deleted, ABC News reported.
“I have no evidence, and it is impossible to leave evidence at all. … You are always afraid of what recorder I bring, leaving evidence or something,” the post on her verified Chinese social media account stated.
“But even if I become like an egg hitting against a rock and like moths extinguished in the flame, I will tell the truth about you.”
Not long after that, Peng fell out of the public eye as speculation on her whereabouts swirled.
An email purportedly sent by the tennis star to the global Women’s Tennis Association two weeks later explained she was “resting at home,” though even the WTA was dubious of its origins.
But Peng finally emerged from her retreat to dine on Saturday with Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, and other officials, according to CNN. On Sunday, CNN reported, she gave her first public interview since November to French news outlet L’Equipe.
In the interview, seemingly conducted under the watchful eye of a regime official, Peng walked back her sexual assault claim saying it was an “enormous misunderstanding.”
However, this only creates more suspicions about coercion from the CCP, and Peng was cagey about why she made and then deleted that post.
“Because I wanted to,” is the only explanation she gave to L’Equipe and wouldn’t comment at all on what, if anything, the Chinese government had done about that post.
“My sentimental problems, my private life, should not be involved in sports and politics,” Peng said, according to ABC.
“And sport should not be politicized because, when it is, most of the time it amounts to turning one’s back to the Olympic spirit and it goes against the will of the world of sport and of the athletes.”
The circumstances surrounding the interview drew as much attention as Peng’s words.
“Chinese official seen lurking near Peng Shuai as she again denies sex assault claim,” the New York Post tweeted with a photo that caught the reflection of the official, identified by the U.K. Daily Mail as Wang Kan, the Chinese Olympic Committee chief of staff, in a nearby mirror as Peng smiled for the camera.
Peng also attended events at the Winter Games and witnessed American-born Chinese skier Eileen Gu clinch the gold medal for China in the women’s freeski event at the Big Air Shougang venue on Tuesday.
This whole trip was carefully orchestrated to give the appearance that all is serene under the Communist regime in China — a move that’s shocking in its audacity, even for a government as duplicitous as the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s.
James Gray, a British journalist, astutely pointed out in an opinion piece for iNews that the “Chinese once again used the occasion as a political football.”
Indeed, Peng’s obviously stage-managed interview, the denials, and the forced public appearances are all evidence of a campaign to memory-hole tennis star’s accusations against a high-ranking official and, by extension, the Chinese government.
Like all authoritarian regimes, the Chinese Communist Party has turned its country into a dystopian hellscape — and now the government must work overtime to quash anything that gives that fact away.
It seems absurd that the regime would think it could get away with this during such a high-profile event as the Olympics, but it makes sense given the current political climate.
The regime knows that even the United States, the world’s foremost superpower, is putty in its hands as long as President Joe Biden is in office — and what other country would have the means or the might to stop them?
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