With weeks to go until the Beijing Winter Olympics get underway, China has disappeared one of its own athletes. Yet faced with a potential public-relations disaster, the International Olympic Committee has decided to abet Chinese human-rights abuses.
On Nov. 2, Chinese tennis star and three-time Olympian Peng Shuai took to social media to accuse a former vice premier of sexual assault. Censors quickly scrubbed the allegations from the Chinese Internet. Peng has not been seen in public since.
This week, Women’s Tennis Association chairman and CEO Steve Simon received an e-mail purporting to be from Peng, in which the author wrote, “I’m not missing, nor am I unsafe. I’ve just been resting at home and everything is fine.” Unconvinced, Simon said the e-mail “only raises my concerns as to her safety and whereabouts” and called for a transparent investigation. Simon added that he was “willing to pull our business” from China if the matter was not resolved to his liking.
The IOC took a more shameful tack. Acting as a witting tool of the Chinese Communist Party, the committee issued a stunning statement: “We have seen the latest reports and are encouraged by assurances that she is safe.”
The IOC was already in hot water for holding the Olympics in a country credibly accused of committing genocide. In a previous era, the IOC proudly contributed to the global effort to end apartheid in South Africa by banning South African Olympic participation for decades. Today, the IOC grovels at the feet of authoritarians, putting its bottom line before the dignity of victims of abuse and the athletes it purports to champion.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden said he was considering a diplomatic boycott of the games. American athletes would still participate, but there would be no official American delegation. This is too little, too late. The Biden administration sat on its hands for 10 months rather than exercise international leadership to strip Beijing of the games. The Trump administration sat on its hands for years before that.
The Peng Shuai affair, however, throws into stark relief the foolishness of holding the Olympics in China. How can Beijing be trusted to guarantee the safety of foreign athletes when it won’t guarantee the safety of its own? The Chinese Communist Party has now provided an opening for a last-ditch effort to postpone the games and move them to a more suitable location — one where the host won’t use the Olympics to aggrandize its own power and rub the freedom-loving world’s nose in a genocide it has been too feckless to effectively counter.
In recent days, tennis stars have been stepping up in a big way. Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Naomi Osaka and others have spoken out in support of Peng. The men’s tennis governing body supported the WTA’s calls for a transparent investigation.
Meanwhile, NBA center Enes Kanter has been calling out China for its human rights abuses, using Twitter and the unique cultural power of basketball sneakers to make his case. American Olympic hopefuls Evan Bates, Nathan Chen and Vincent Chou criticized Chinese human-rights abuses during media appearances last month.
Ongoing crimes against humanity should have been enough to get the sporting world’s attention as the 2022 Winter Olympics drew ever closer. But sometimes it takes a personal connection to inspire action.
For Serena Williams & Co., Peng is one of their own. With luck, the tennis community’s decision to set aside financial considerations and speak up on Peng’s behalf will inspire and empower others to add their own voices not only to Peng’s cause but to the years-long effort to move the Olympics.
Maybe the tennis stars of yesterday and today will ignite a firestorm — and the IOC will be left with a tough decision: get burned or get out of the way.
Michael Mazza is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the Global Taiwan Institute and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
