Peng Shuai Kickstarts China’s #MeToo Movement, Accusing Ex Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of Sexual Assault

Allegations of sexual assault lobbed by tennis star Peng Shuai in opposition to a high-ranking official within the Chinese language Communist Get together have been faraway from her social media by the Beijing authorities, Chinese language feminist supporters say.

Peng alleged on China’s Weibo social media micro weblog that former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli sexually assaulted her earlier than she reluctantly agreed to proceed an affair with him.

The put up was taken down inside minutes.

In what’s being described as China’s first #MeToo public accusation in opposition to a high-ranking official within the Communist Get together, state censors are actually scrubbing any reference to the allegation on China’s social media platforms, however not earlier than a screenshot began making the rounds, The Washington Submit studies.

Now even searches for Peng’s title and the phrase for “tennis” are blocked on the social-media platform, and her account seems to have been frozen, which means nobody can put up messages of assist. Peng, who’s 35, is claimed to have agreed to an affair with Zhang, who’s in his mid-seventies, in response to the since-removed put up through which she described how she had been invited to Zhang’s home to play tennis with him and his spouse three years in the past.

After the match, Peng wrote that Zhang pressured her to have intercourse. “I by no means consented that afternoon, crying on a regular basis,” she wrote. She then mentioned she reluctantly agreed to have an affair with him, however that he insisted on maintaining it a secret. When he canceled an appointment to debate the matter on Tuesday, she posted her grievance on-line. “I do know I can’t say all of it clearly, and that there’s no use in saying it,” she wrote. “However I nonetheless need to say it.”

Peng was the No. 1 ranked doubles tennis participant in China in 2014 and received Wimbledon in 2013 and the French Open in 2014 together with her tennis companion Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan. Zhang served as vice premier from 2013 to 2018.

Supporters of China’s stifled feminist motion lauded the tennis star for coming ahead with the accusation. Allegations of sexual misconduct are uncommon in China with lots of the accusers punished for coming ahead or have confronted expenses of slander by the accused.

“I do know that for somebody of your eminence, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, you’ve mentioned that you simply’re not afraid,” Peng wrote within the deleted put up, in response to The New York Occasions. “However even when it’s simply me, like an egg hitting a rock, or a moth to the flame, courting self-destruction, I’ll inform the reality about you.”