

On Baidu, a Chinese search engine, queries for “Peng Shuai” spiked to nearly 2 million on Nov. Within China, it remains unclear how many people are aware of the controversy. He added, “This is really the best they’ve been able to come up with.” “There’s no narrative even to really distract there’s nothing substantive beyond character attacks on the West and Western media,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, a research program in Hong Kong. The posts have done little to appease concerns outside China. The narrative that Peng is being used by hostile foreign forces to undermine China has been echoed by other state media employees on Twitter. “Can any girl fake such sunny smile under pressure? Those who suspect Peng Shuai is under duress, how dark they must be inside,” Hu Xijin, the editor of the nationalist Global Times tabloid, wrote on Twitter. Along similar lines, some Chinese journalists took to Western social media sites to question the motives of those who expressed concern about Peng. But the seemingly curated comments on the post accused France of meddling in China’s affairs. It calls on Beijing to respect its commitments to combating violence against women. In a strange turn, the only recent post about Peng that remains on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, is from the French Embassy in China. “It’s no surprise that the propaganda system is floundering,” he said. Peng’s original charge,” said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Australia and author of “The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers.” “They have to placate not just the usual critics in the West, but also decidedly apolitical tennis stars and sporting associations overseas, while at the same time burying all mention of Ms. Though Peng brings more international backing, Chinese officials may be betting the social media cycle of shock and anger will eventually dissipate.įor Beijing, the concern is that the blowback could interfere with the upcoming Winter Olympics, which China is hosting. When Hao Haidong, a retired Chinese soccer star, called for the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020, officials purged records of his career and waited as he faded from memory.
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“Everything she does will be scripted from beginning to end she will be told exactly what to do, how to act, how to smile.”Ī waiting game has helped Beijing defang attacks from individual critics in the past, be they dissidents or sports stars. “She is obviously under custodial control,” Dahlin said.

He said in a recent interview that he saw the state media’s gradual release of photos and videos of Peng as evidence that Beijing was monitoring her movements mainly to silence her while waiting for the outcry to die down.


When Peter Dahlin, a Swedish activist, was detained by authorities in 2016, he was forced to speak in a Chinese propaganda video about his so-called crimes. In 2019, a state run news service ran a “proof of life” video of Abdurehim Heyit, a prominent Uyghur folk poet and musician, to quell international concerns that he had died in an internment camp. To some, the apparent stage-managing of Peng was a reminder of authorities’ use of forced confessions and other video testimony from detainees for propaganda. Peng also appeared in a live video call with the leader of the International Olympic Committee that only raised more concerns. Instead, they have sought to put an end to the questions about Peng’s whereabouts, releasing photos and videos of the tennis star that seemed designed to show that she was safe despite having disappeared from public life. When Beijing-backed journalists have addressed Peng on overseas social media sites, they have studiously avoided mentioning the nature of her accusations, or their target. On overseas sites like Twitter and Facebook that are blocked in China, the response has been muted and fragmentary. To Chinese authorities, the plan of action for now appears to be one of inaction.
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