China tennis star accuses ex-vice premier of forcing her into sex

Former world No.1 tennis doubles player Peng Shuai, one of China’s biggest sporting stars, has publicly accused a former Chinese vice premier of forcing her into sex several years ago in a social media post that was later deleted.

According to a screenshot of her verified Weibo account late on Tuesday, Peng said that Zhang Gaoli, who became a member of the Politburo Standing Committee  China’s top decision-making body  coerced her into sex and they later had an on-off consensual relationship.

The post was deleted around half an hour after it was published, although searches for Peng’s name on China’s tightly controlled internet surged after the posting, and screenshots were shared among private WeChat groups and over iMessage.

China’s internet is heavily censored and the private lives of top leaders are an especially sensitive subject.

Peng, who said in the post that she could provide no evidence to back her allegations, did not respond to a request for comment sent to her Weibo account. Sports marketing agency APG, which says on its website that it represents her, did not respond to a request for comment.

China’s State Council Information Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment, including for comment from Zhang. When asked at a regular daily briefing about the Weibo post, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said he was not aware of the issue and that “this is not a question related to foreign affairs”.

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Weibo and Tencent, which operates WeChat, did not respond to requests for comment.

Sexual harassment and assault were for years rarely broached in public in China until a #MeToo movement began in 2018, when a Beijing college student publicly accused her professor of sexual harassment. That spread to non-government organisations, media and other industries.