Peng Shuai

Early Life

Peng Shuai was born on 8 January 1986 in Xiangtan, Hunan. According to a Xinhua interview with her father, Peng Jijun, she began playing tennis at seven; diagnosed as a child with a congenital heart condition, she underwent an interventional heart procedure at 12 that left six coils in her heart, returning to training after about two months' rest but with her training load permanently limited. At 15 she went alone to train in the United States, and she later suffered repeated injuries to her left-hand ligaments, knees, back and shoulders.

Tennis Career

In 2002 Peng became the first Chinese woman to enter international professional tennis under a new arrangement between the Chinese Tennis Association and a foreign management agency. In 2005 her singles ranking rose to No. 31, at one point the highest of any Chinese woman; at the 11th National Games in 2009 she won all four tennis gold medals she contested — women's team, mixed doubles, women's doubles and women's singles. Her career-high singles ranking was No. 14, in 2011. At the 2014 US Open she reached the women's singles semifinals, where she was forced to retire with heat illness in the second set against Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki.

Peng was above all a doubles specialist. According to her official Women's Tennis Association (WTA) profile, she won 23 WTA tour doubles titles, many of them with Taiwan's Hsieh Su-wei — a pairing dubbed the "cross-strait duo" — including the 2013 Wimbledon, the 2013 WTA Finals and the 2014 French Open women's doubles titles; on 17 February 2014 she became the world No. 1 in women's doubles.

The 2021 Allegation and After

In November 2021 Peng wrote in a social-media post that former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli had sexually assaulted her during a years-long, on-and-off relationship. The post was quickly removed from the internet and she largely disappeared from public view; the WTA said discussion of it was censored in China. On 1 December 2021, WTA chairman and CEO Steve Simon announced the immediate suspension of all WTA tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, calling on Chinese officials to verifiably prove that Peng was free and able to speak without interference or intimidation and to investigate the allegation in a full, fair and transparent manner.

During the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022, IOC President Thomas Bach had dinner with Peng in Beijing on 5 February. In an interview with the French newspaper L'Équipe, arranged by the Chinese Olympic Committee and with a Chinese official present, she said she had never said anyone sexually assaulted her, that the post had given rise to a huge misunderstanding, and that she had deleted it herself. Zhang Gaoli has not responded publicly to the allegation.

On 13 April 2023 the WTA announced that it would resume tournaments in China. Simon said that its requests — a meeting with Peng and a transparent investigation of her allegation — had not been met, but that it had received assurances from people close to her that she was safe and living with her family in Beijing.