WTA will not return to China as Peng Shuai safety concerns remain

The WTA Tour will not host any tournaments in China in 2022 as they continue to work to find a resolution over Peng Shuai’s current situation.

The former doubles world number one raised concerns last November when she accused China’s former Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault.

Shortly after Peng made the claim — which was posted on social media website Weibo — the post was deleted and the tennis star disappeared from the public eye for three weeks.

A month after Peng’s disappearance, the WTA pulled all of its scheduled tournaments in China, a decision expected to cost the Tour hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorship and broadcast deals.

Peng has since been seen at public events, but the last time an appearance was reported was at the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.

“We remain dedicated to finding a resolution to this,” WTA CEO Steve Simon told The Tennis Podcast. “We want to find a resolution that Peng can be comfortable with, the Chinese government can be comfortable with, and we can be comfortable with.

“We are not about walking away from China. We have suspended our operations there right now. We will continue to do that until we get to a resolution.”

Peng’s claims against Gaoli were removed mere minutes after being uploaded to Weibo — China’s version of Twitter. The platform deleted her post and also blocked users from searching her name, or even the word ‘tennis’ on the site.

Shortly after, the 23-time doubles tournament winner fell silent for a number of weeks, leading to widespread concern.

During the period of silence, the only form of contact that purportedly came from Peng was a  a “dubious” letter claiming the sexual assault accusations made did not come from the tennis star.

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