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Peng Shuai has made serious allegations against Zhang Gaoli
Photo: EDGAR SU / REUTERS
Former world number one in tennis doubles, Peng Shuai, has accused former Chinese Vice Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli of forcing her to have sex.
In a social media post on the Weibo platform that was apparently removed from her account and later deleted, Peng is said to have stated that although she could not present any evidence, Zhang initially forced her to do so.
Later on, an occasional amicable relationship emerged from this.
The 75-year-old Zhang, who has since retired from politics, was a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the People's Republic of China, the highest decision-making body in the country, from 2012 to 2017.
From 2013 to 2018 he also held the rank of Vice Prime Minister.
Social media heavily censored
About half an hour after its publication, Peng's contribution disappeared from Weibo, but spread through shared screenshots in the messenger service WeChat, and the search queries for Peng skyrocketed. Then on Wednesday morning, searches on Weibo returned no results when searching for Peng. Discussions were deleted and prevented, and it was no longer possible to send the screenshots via the messengers WeChat and QQ.
Sexual assault has long been a taboo subject in the Chinese public.
A #MeToo movement began in 2018 when a Beijing student publicly accused her professor of sexual harassment.
In the meantime, there are regular allegations against influential men from Chinese society. At the beginning of August, the pop star Kris Wu was arrested on charges of rape.
cev / rtr
