National Review
Online
Monday, November
22, 2021
The case of Peng Shuai, a
Chinese tennis star who went missing, should be a clarion call to the sports
world to take a stand against the oppressive Chinese government.
For those who have not been following, the
situation is this: On November 2, Peng posted on Weibo (China’s equivalent of
Twitter) claiming that she was coerced into sex by the Communist regime’s
former vice premier, Zhang Gaoli. The post disappeared within a half hour, and
she was not seen publicly for weeks.
As we braced for another example of a
professional sports league bending the knee to China, we were pleasantly
surprised by the exemplary performance of Steve Simon, the leader of the
Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). Simon said he was willing to lose hundreds of
millions of dollars of investments that had been made to build up tennis in
China if that’s what it takes to make sure Peng was accounted for and that her
allegations were properly investigated.
“We’re definitely willing to pull our
business and deal with all the complications that come with it,” Simon told CNN last week. “Because this is certainly, this is bigger than the
business.”
How refreshing when so few in the sports
or corporate worlds see anything bigger than business when dealing with
Beijing.
Over the weekend, the Chinese government
launched a propaganda counteroffensive. Various stilted and dubious videos and
photos were posted depicting Peng out in
public around Beijing. Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
claimed its president spoke with Peng and that she “explained that
she is safe and well, living at her home in Beijing, but would like to have her
privacy respected at this time.”
The photos and videos were all posted by
employees of media controlled by the Chinese government. And the IOC, an
organization with a history of corruption that is desperate to avoid
controversy ahead of the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games, is hardly a reliable
narrator. Even if the photos and videos are genuine and the IOC account is
totally accurate, it does not answer the question of whether Peng is able to
speak freely, without censorship and without fear of repercussions for her and
her family, which seems highly unlikely. Nor does it address her accusations.
This is the kind of “transparency” that guaranteed we’d never truly learn
COVID’s origins.
The WTA, rightly, noted that the weekend’s
propaganda push does not
alleviate the organization’s concerns.
As admirable as the stance taken by the
WTA is, it is likely not enough. There needs to be a broader campaign of
pressure by the organized sports world against China.
The most dramatic step, of course, would
be a decision to boycott the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing, which never
should have been selected to host the games in the first place. As we wrote
last year, “This magazine has long been appalled that Beijing is scheduled to
host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. As a rule, the Olympics should not be held
in police states.”
In the Wall Street Journal,
Enes Kanter, the Boston Celtics center who has been taking a bold stand against
China’s enslavement of the Uyghurs, has made a passionate case in favor of
a total boycott. This is a fraught issue, since athletes who have trained for years for
the Olympics would miss out on their chance to compete, through no fault of
their own. When the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan, over 200 of the 466 U.S. Olympic athletes didn’t make it onto the 1984
team. While a hard boycott is our preference, President Biden should at the very
least announce a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Olympics, which he so far
has merely said he is considering.
Beyond that, any U.S. sports leagues with
business interests in China should join in solidarity with women’s tennis and
also threaten to pull out of the totalitarian country. This includes, most
prominently, the NBA, which has disgracefully allowed its multibillion-dollar
business interests in China to get in the way of speaking out on human rights.
Even worse, in 2019, the NBA infamously apologized to China when Daryl Morey, then the Houston Rockets general
manager, tweeted, “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong,” While the NBA has
found the time to condemn “vigilantism” following the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict and weigh in on every other
hot-button issue in the U.S., it has not taken a stand on behalf of Peng,
presumably out of fear of financial repercussions. They have an opportunity to
redeem the league here by showing even the NBA has its limits. While not as
extensively entangled, both the MLB and NFL have established business ties to China,
and they should also reconsider.
Unlike an Olympic boycott, were major U.S.
sports leagues to pull out of China, it would make no difference to the game or
the athletes. Players would still be able to compete and earn plenty of money
in the U.S. and elsewhere. LeBron James, for instance, can still pursue his
eleventh appearance in an NBA finals and all sorts of endorsement deals even if
his league stops buck-raking in China, with the GOAT happily toeing the company
line.
There has never been any doubt what the
Chinese regime is, but the Peng case brings it home in a personal and powerful
way. No one should be going out of his way to give this regime propaganda
victories or bending to its will.
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