Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis player who vanished from public view last year after appearing to accuse a former top government official of s.e.xual assault, has denied ever making the allegation in an interview with a French newspaper.
Peng’s well-being became the subject of international concern in November after a lengthy social media post that appeared to accuse Zhang Gaoli, the former vice premier of the Chinese government, of s.e.xually assaulting her as part of a yearslong affair. The post to Peng’s official account on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform popular in China, was deleted soon after it was published, and Peng did not appear again in public for almost three weeks.
Her subsequent retraction of the allegation, which was published by Chinese state media, was met with skepticism by foreign tennis officials, players and others who questioned whether she was speaking freely.
“I never said anyone had sexually assaulted me in any way,” Peng told L’Equipe, a French newspaper focused on sports, in an interview published on Monday, her first with a foreign news organization since the social media post briefly appeared on Nov. 2.
Echoing comments she had previously made to Chinese-language media, Peng said there had been a “huge misunderstanding in the outside world” over the post.
Peng was accompanied by two people including Wang Kan, chief of staff of the Chinese Olympic Committee, who arranged the hourlong interview after a request from the newspaper. L’Equipe agreed to submit its questions in advance and publish Peng’s answers verbatim without comment, although it said it was able to ask additional questions during the interview that were not preapproved.
The tennis star spoke in Chinese, with translations provided by Wang as well as L’Equipe’s own interpreter in Paris. The newspaper said Peng, wearing a mask and the red tracksuit of the Chinese hockey team, “appeared in good shape.”
Peng, a former world No. 1 doubles player and three-time Olympian, also told L’Equipe she was retiring from professional tennis, citing a longtime knee injury that she had been receiving treatment for abroad before the pandemic. She said she regretted not being able to compete at the Tokyo Olympics last year.
Source: BBC
In other news – Ntsiki Mazwai sets the record straight
Poet and singer Ntsiki Mazwai has set the record straight after claims that she wants to get paid for her activism.
This comes after podcaster MacG said Ntsiki demanded R70,000 after he extended an invitation to Ntsiki to weigh in on Ari Lennox’s Twitter rant calling Africans “peasants” on Podcast and Chill. Learn more
