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general freedom international affairs

Very Free?

“Why would I be monitored?” Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai queried a reporter last Sunday. “I’ve always been very free.”

Yet governments the world over do certainly spy on citizens, and nowhere more virulently than in China, or with less accountability. 

As for being “free,” or “very free,” that’s the real issue, the very reason those who love tennis along with all who love freedom — and life itself — have been so worried about Peng. 

She’s not free. Not even close. Nor are 1.4 billion others living under Chinazi rule. 

It’s a big problem.

To recap the story from last month: On November 2, Peng posted a statement on her official Weibo page, her country’s state-​monitored-​and-​censored equivalent of Facebook* (which is banned there). According to The Washington Post, she “claimed that former vice minister Zhang Gaoli had pressured her into having sex with him.”

That’s a scandal — and possibly a crime.

Followed by another crime: Her post was removed. She was silenced. And then Grand Slam doubles tennis champion Peng Shuai was summarily erased from the Chinese Internet. 

Gone. Disappeared. Nary a trace.

As weeks passed with neither sight nor sound of Peng, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) started to raise the alarm, threatening to withdraw from their quite lucrative activities in China if her safety could not be guaranteed.

That’s when Chinese media clumsily hyped an email wherein Peng supposedly said she was peachy-​keen. Then the International Olympic Committee, on the CCP’s payroll, held a staged video call with her without bothering to even inquire about her allegations. Followed by a second silly call.

Now the update: last weekend, Peng appeared in a supposedly impromptu interview, telling a pro-​Beijing newspaper in Singapore, “I have never said or written that anyone has sexually assaulted me.” 

But more than her original allegation, which remains unproven and uninvestigated, it is the totalitarian treatment of this one professional tennis player post-​allegation that has caught the world’s attention. Perhaps Peng’s plight is easier to get one’s head around than two million Uighurs in concentration camps or China’s organ harvesting exploits.

None of it will apparently lead to an Olympic boycott by the U.S.

Still, the WTA, to its enormous honor, has stuck to its guns, forfeiting millions in revenue by canceling all events in China and making clear that “these appearances [by Peng] do not alleviate or address the WTA’s significant concerns about her well-​being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion.”

Because Peng Shuai is not very free. Or safe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* Of course, Facebook is a U.S. Government-​encouraged corporate censor. That’s terrible, as regularly noted on these pages, but not nearly as suffocating and brutal as the CCP’s system.

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China Double-​Faults

Whew! Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has not been “disappeared.” 

Three weeks ago, Peng publicly accused China’s former vice premier, Zhang Gaoli, of sexual assault. “Her accusation on social media was removed within minutes” by “the Chinese government,” notes Fox News

“News of the controversy,” The Washington Post adds, “remains almost universally censored within China.”

No one heard from Peng for weeks after she made the charge, understandably concerning sports officials and fellow players. Adding to the ugly optics was a phony email scam — obviously perpetrated by Chinese state media — claiming that she was okay. Then, last Thursday, Women’s Tennis Association Chairman Steve Simon put Beijing on notice that over Peng’s safety his organization was “willing to pull out of China, potentially losing hundreds of millions of dollars.”

On Sunday, China responded, allowing Peng to join a video chat with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, along with a Chinese sports official and the chair of the IOC Athlete’s Commission.

“Peng Shuai has officially reappeared in China,” explains The Washington Post, “but with silence surrounding her sexual assault allegations against a senior government official.”

“It was good to see Peng Shuai in recent videos,” a WTA spokesmen informed CNN, “but they don’t alleviate or address the WTA’s concern about her well-​being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion.”

Well, that applies to almost everyone in China. Censorship and coercion are what the Chinazis do

So what will the world’s athletes do … when, in ten weeks’ time, they are scheduled to appear in Beijing at the 2022 Winter Olympics?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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