Chinese tennis star accuses former top government leader of sexual assault

Peng Shuai, 35, a former Wimbledon and French Open doubles champion, on Tuesday accused retired Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of pressuring her into having sex, according to screenshots of a since-deleted post from Peng’s verified account on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform.CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of the more than 1,600-word post, and has reached out to Peng for comment, as well as China’s State Council Information Office, which handles press inquires for the central government. In the post, which reads as an open letter to Zhang, she alleges a relationship over an intermittent period that spanned at least 10 years. Peng says she opened her heart to Zhang, who is now 75 years old.”Why did you have to come back to me, took me to your home to force me to have sex with you? Yes, I did not have any evidence, and it was simply impossible to have evidence,” she wrote.”I couldn’t describe how disgusted I was, and how many times I asked myself am I still a human? I feel like a walking corpse. Every day I was acting, which person is the real me?”CNN could not reach Zhang, who served on the ruling Communist Party’s seven person Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s supreme leadership body, from 2012 to 2017 during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s first term in power. He retired as vice premier in 2018. In China, top leaders of Zhang’s standing remain unapproachable and private even after retirement, which makes reaching him to comment for this story virtually impossible.China’s In a sign of the unprecedented level of censorship, even a Weibo discussion page about tennis was closed for comments. And obscure references to the scandal were removed, too.On Douban, China’s IMDB-like movie review website, the page of Korean romance TV show “Prime Minister and I” was censored, after users discussed Peng’s case in its review section.The swift and thorough censorship stands in stark contrast to the response to other recent high-profile #MeToo cases, such as the rape allegations against Sexual assault survivors have long faced strong stigma and resistance in China, at the official level as well as among the public. But in recent years, a growing number of women have rallied around victims who spoke out, as the #MeToo movement gathered steam.Lv, the feminist activist in New York, said Peng sparked wide public sympathy partially because how successful she has been in her professional career.In 2013, Peng won the doubles championship at Wimbledon with her partner from Taiwan. In 2014, the duo won the French Open double titles. Peng was also a former US Open semi-finalist. “She is a truly outstanding woman, the glory of China, a world famous person. Even women like her would be trapped in a predicament like this,” Lv said. “This shows just how many hurdles Chinese women have to leap over on their pursuit for equality and independence.””Everybody is worried about her. Nobody knows what would happen to her. I think public attention to the case is her biggest protection,” she added.