Tennis star Peng Shuai alleges sexual assault by former Chinese Vice President

A retired Communist official and close aide of Chinese President Xi Jinping has been accused of sexual assault by tennis star Peng Shuai. In a post that has seems to have since been removed from Chinese social media site Weibo, Peng said former Vice Premier, Zhang Gaoli, had “forced” her into a sexual relationship. Internet searches for the former number one ranked tennis doubles player also appear to have been restricted.

Zhang, 75, served as China’s Vice Premier between 2013 and 2018.

“I know that someone of your eminence, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, you’ll say that you’re not afraid”, Peng wrote in her post, BBC News reports. “But even if it’s just striking a stone with a pebble, or a moth attacking a flame and courting self destruction, I will tell the truth about you,” she said.

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Peng said Zhang first assaulted her when she visited his home to play tennis. “That afternoon I didn’t give my consent and couldn’t stop crying,” she wrote. “You brought me to your house and forced me and you to have relations.”

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Peng, 35, conceded she had no evidence to back her claims, except for her “distorted but very real experience.”

The tennis star’s social media post is the latest in a string of high-profile MeToo cases in China. A popular TV host, Zhou Xiaoxuan, accused another TV personality, Zhu Jun, of sexual harrasment in an online essay in 2018. The case was dismissed in September.

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Peng has won two Grand Slam women’s doubles trophies, the first at Wimbledon in 2013 and the second at the Roland Garros tournament in 2014, both alongside Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei. Even though a search on China’s most popular search engine, Baidu, shows up more than seven million results for Peng, discussions about her allegations against Zhang seem to have been throttled.

A search of her name shows only some 700 results and users see no results at all when they search for her account, despite her having more than half a million followers, according to BBC.