The WTA stands alone against Xi

In November 2021, Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai posted a message on her Weibo blog, explaining for the first time how former Politburo member Zhang Gaoli had sexually abused her for an extended period of time. Peng’s story was the first public accusation of a high-level politician in the PR China, and led to widespread condemnation. What is more, her subsequent disappearance and removal of her blog post from Weibo led to fears for her safety and anger towards the Chinese government for its mismanagement of the situation, leaving the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai trending on social media.

Besides the personal tragedy for Peng, who has recently announced her abrupt retirement from the sport, the most significant consequence of the Chinese government’s presumed detention of Peng has been the decision by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) to withdraw all its tournaments from Chinese territory, a step that has been widely considered bold and impressive considering the considerable financial stakes of the association in the Chinese tennis world. For the WTA CEO, the decision was simply inevitable: he refused to forsake his principles for financial gains, and continued his support for Peng.

Peng Shuai in action at the 2019 Australian Open.

Now, a few months later, the situation has not significantly changed: Peng has not returned to the tennis courts, and women’s tennis similarly has not returned to China. How has this perseverance by the WTA affected the organisation? To what extent has its moral stance been followed by other organisations? And what does this tell us about the conflict between Western values and financial incentives in the Chinese market space?

First, it is good to remind ourselves how monumental the decision by the WTA is. Transnational cooperations are notoriously bad in sensing the right thing to do, and international sports organisations are no exception to the rule. Most infamous are organisations like the International Olympic Committee (IOC), hosting the most recent Olympic Games in Russia and China while quelling public criticism on those states’ human rights records, and the FIFA, which has been condemned for a whole range of issues, including its decision to organize the men’s World Cup in Qatar, refusing to acknowledge the thousands of deaths amongst migrant workers.

When Peng Shuai publicized her story through Weibo and subsequently disappeared from the public eye, then, the tennis community understandably did not have high hopes that the international tennis organisations would do the right thing. These low expectations, however, turned out to be mostly unnecessary. Soon after Peng’s disappearance, French tennis player Alizé Cornet was the first athlete to introduce the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai, followed by other players, including the widely known Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, Andy Murray, and Novak Djokovic. The hashtag and call for clarity quickly went viral, drawing attention from tennis tournaments, national Olympic committees, and politicians, including the White House. Within a few days, Peng’s story was top of mind not only within the world of tennis, but also within the world of sports and even international politics.

This international outcry created an environment for international organisations to speak out, and understandably all eyes primarily were on two organisations: the women’s tennis association, responsible for the wellbeing of their athletes, and the IOC. There was no need for a long wait to measure the WTA’s response: very quickly, the association’s CEO published a statement that was widely praised amongst tennis players, fans, and journalists. In the statement, he demanded clarity on the safety and whereabouts of Peng. When no satisfactory Chinese response followed, on December 3rd, the WTA suspended all its activity in China, arguing that “the leadership in China has not addressed this very serious issue in any credible way.”

In my view, at the time, these actions of the WTA in November and December were significant. For the first time, a major international organisation completely suspended its (commercial) activities in China due to concerns about human rights violations. Arguably, the actions of the WTA and other organisations in the months after the disappearance were—and still are—even more significant. After all, the attention span of the general public to stories like Peng’s is very limited. As often happens, after some time, the world goes back to its normal state; it acts like little has happened. The analysis above has illustrated that the WTA has not ‘gone back’, and instead has maintained its position. Yet, it still stands alone.

To this day, the WTA is the only international organisation that publicly expresses its sorrow over Peng’s situation. The closest to an involvement in the situation by another organisation was, again, the IOC’s embarassing enabling of the Chinese government’s propaganda: during the Winter Olympics, Thomas Bach was so kind to let himself be filmed together with Peng at a skiing event. Besides this, no other organisations have come forward and demanded further investigation or have put pressure on Beijing in any other significant way. Notable, for example, is by the ATP, or men’s tennis association, to continue all their activities in China.

This raises an important question: how should civil society—companies, NGOs, sports organisations—approach situations of human rights violations like Peng’s? Broad consensus is that the WTA has acted impressively, but why does it still stand alone? Why did no other organisation provide direct financial assistance to the WTA when it stopped its business in China? Why were there no other sports organisations that even contemplated following the same route?

There are several potential answers to these questions. The most likely, of course, is that these companies and organisations are not willing to risk their business in China: the Chinese market is lucrative, and principles are expensive.

Yet more fundamentally, below the surface, there is a deep unease in Western countries on matters of human rights abuses in China, to which Peng’s case belongs. This certainly is the case for Western governments and their diplomats. How does one address the Chinese government and put pressure on them for abuses of fundamental human rights, when China is so powerful and willing to punish anyone who provides any criticism? How does one negotiate a discussion on human rights violations when the paradigms on these human rights differ so fundamentally between, say, the Netherlands and China? Is there, realistically, anything that can be done?

The West—the United States and the European Union—likes to take the moral high ground, and has done so enthusiastically for decades. Human rights are seen as natural, non-negotiable, and universal. However, one has to acknowledge that a significant part of the world does not share these principles, and intrinsically disagrees on what should be considered ‘violations’ of ‘human rights’. In the past, the West was able to impose its discourse on human rights on other parts of the world, but as the West slowly declines, it loses its capabilities to do so. Increasingly, other states, of which China might be the most powerful example, will respond to any criticism with a shrug: we disagree with your assessment of human rights; we see them differently; and what are you going to do about it, exactly.

There is, then, no easy answer. How to cope with human rights violations remains difficult when the violator is one of the two most powerful states in the world. (Note that justifiable accusations of human rights violations addressed at the United States have not met a more positive and constructive response.) Although it is an uncomfortable truth, there may not be much that can be done. The case of Peng Shuai indicates this, too: the WTA still stands alone, and Peng’s career is over. Withdrawing Western sports competitions and organisations, as well as ending all sponsoring deals, would seem righteous, but would also isolate hundreds of millions of sporting fans in China, with little effect on the local human rights situation. Ignoring abuses of human rights in any host country because of the potential awkwardness of confrontation would be considered an abandonment of important norms and values that often are embedded deeply in those exact sports organisations.

Thomas Bach shakes hands with Zhang Gaoli (June 2016).

Considering this difficult situation, two things can simultaneously be true: (i) we do not want to isolate ourselves from Chinese society, economy, and culture; and (ii) we do not want to weaken our position on basic human rights, as they are the foundation of our own society. From this, a new way of engaging China needs to somehow emerge.

Here, there is a difference between incidental dependence and strategic dependence. The first refers to the West's engagement with civil society in China; the latter refers to macro-economic and geopolitical relations with China. It is wise to pursue a European economic approach that is less bound to China: that is, implementing measures that limit the dependence on Chinese commodities and other forms of trade in sensitive industries. This is a strategic reorientation that allows for tough measures when necessary. However, the incidental dependence—referring to sports tournaments or NGO activities, for example—should not be eliminated. Isolating the Chinese from Western civil society is not a solution. Macro-economics are cold and platonic, but this is not. Having ‘incidental’ presence in China is good to continue a healthy relationship with the Chinese people, exposing them to our cultural norms and values, and vice versa.

This is not a rebuttal of the WTA’s decision to leave China. I just do not think that these decisions should be left to individual organisations, or even individual people. There should be a coordinated (governmental) response that takes up the responsibility. That makes sense: having a single organisation trying to pressure a government as large as China’s is unrealistic, and a coordinated effort might be more impactful. Moreover, it can prevent a situation of isolatedness for the organisation—here, the WTA—where others stay silent. Furthermore, leaving it to a governmental response allows for levels of diplomacy that are not often possible for regular non-governmental organisations.

This means that a middle ground should be sought to balance between demonstrating disagreement with the Chinese government’s approach towards human rights on the one hand, and continuing to interact with the Chinese people and Chinese civil society on the other hand. Discussions on the human rights record of Beijing will not go away: there is ample room to discuss the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the oppression of political opposition in Hong Kong, the mistreatment of early whisteblowers during the Covid-19 outbreak, and more. Yet precisely because this is such a large issue, solitary organisations should not be the agents of the discussion. This should be left to national governments, institutions like the European Union, or a union of assembled sports organisations. In this way, an organisation like the WTA is not forced to stand alone.

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