WTA Chief Threatens To Scrub China Events Over Peng Shuai Case

Women's tennis chief Steve Simon has said the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour is ready to lose millions of dollars by pulling out of China if the case of Chinese player Peng Shuai is not properly investigated there, saying Beijing has a hand in her disappearance, Ralf Jarkowski and Frank Thomas reported for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

Photo Insert: Peng Shuai has vanished from the public eye and searches for her social media presence and the #MeToo movement have been blocked since she made sexual assault allegations against former Chinese vice premier Zhang Gaoli.

Peng vanished from the public eye and searches for her social media presence and the #MeToo movement have been blocked since she made sexual assault allegations against former Chinese vice premier Zhang Gaoli on November 2.

China has become a major market on the WTA Tour with tournaments there including the season-ending WTA Finals in Shenzhen - with all events there scrapped in 2020 and 2021 owing to the coronavirus.

WTA chief executive officer Simon told CNN in an interview Thursday that they could reconsider their engagement if no light is shed into Peng's whereabouts and her accusations.

"We're definitely willing to pull our business and deal with all the complications that come with it because this is certainly bigger than the business," he warned. "Women need to be respected and not censored." Peng is a two-time doubles grand slam champion and former world number one in the doubles ranking.

Chinese state media earlier in the week on their English-language channels released an email allegedly from Peng in which she said she was fine and retracted the allegations against Zhang.

However, a cursor was seen in the email, raising suspicions that government propagandists wrote the email. Simon expressed doubt whether the mail was authentic and reiterated this stance in the CNN interview.

"Whether she was coerced into writing it, someone wrote it for her, we don't know. But at this point, I don't think there's any validity in it and we won't be comfortable until we have a chance to speak with her," he said.

Tennis greats including Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, and Novak Djokovic are among those who have voiced concern, and so did on Friday the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB).

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