Images showing Peng Shuai continue to circulate on social networks, this does not prevent the WTA, the body which manages the women's tennis circuit, to reaffirm Monday “its concern” concerning the fate of the Chinese player.
"These (public) appearances do not allay the concerns of the WTA about its well-being and its ability to communicate without censorship or coercion," said the organization, the day after an interview in which she spoke for the first time on rape charges.
On November 2, in a message posted to the quickly vanished Chinese social network Weibo, Peng Shuai described an upset sentimental relationship with former Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli.
The player mentioned in particular a "forced" sexual relationship with the latter, married and 40 years his senior, before and after he occupies high positions at the top of the communist regime.
The message had been censored and the 35-year-old had been missing from radar screens for three weeks, raising concern in the tennis world.
To read also "She is alive but socially dead": what is Beijing playing with Peng Shuai, placed under house arrest?
"Lots of misunderstandings"
For her first public address since the affair, the player refuted any sexual assault.
“First, I want to stress a very important point: I have never said or written that someone sexually assaulted me,” Peng Shuai told Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaobao.
There has been "a lot of misunderstanding" on a "private" matter, added the champion, during an interview filmed on the cell phone.
A Chinese reporter for the nationalist daily Global Times previously posted a new video of the player on Twitter.
The seven-second streak showed the former world No. 1 in doubles chatting with former star basketball player Yao Ming.
A friend sent me this video showing Chinese tennis star player Peng Shuai talked with Yao Ming, one of the most beloved players in @NBA history, this morning at an event “FIS Cross-Country Skiing China City Tour 'in Shanghai.
pic.twitter.com/Ebduv5rean
- Qingqing_Chen (@qingqingparis) December 19, 2021
As international pressure increased on China, other Chinese journalists had tried to reassure by publishing images of Peng Shuai in recent weeks.
A copy of an e-mail attributed to the player in which it was written "everything is fine" had also been made public.
But the authenticity of the documents had left the WTA skeptical.
And the organization had canceled all its tournaments in China in early December, calling for a transparent investigation into the charges of alleged rape of Peng Shuai.
From the start, the case has been completely glossed over in the Chinese media.
And the censors are redoubling their efforts to erase any allusion to the scandal on social networks.