POSTMODERN STALINISM

What happens to China’s disappeared – and why do so few in the West care?

Luke Mintz
Fri, November 19, 2021, 

'A faux pas that inadvertently ‘hurts the feelings of the Chinese people’ can kill your brand there in a minute,' says Dr Jonathan Sullivan

As a child in the enormous, crowded Chinese city of Tianjin, doctors told Peng Shuai she would never play tennis professionally because of a heart defect. Unperturbed, she underwent heart surgery aged 13, and by 15 had broken into China’s national tennis scene. She became known for her ferocious style of play, and her rare tendency to return a serve with both hands gripped to her racquet. In her late teens she bristled at attempts by Communist Party apparatchiks to collect two-thirds of her earnings; eventually, she was allowed to keep her money, as long as she “brought glory” upon China. By 27, she had won doubles at both Wimbledon and the French Open.

But on November 2 this year, a chilly night in Tianjin, her good fortune came to an end. In a lengthy blog posted to Weibo (the Chinese version of Twitter), the 35-year-old described an incident, some years ago, claiming she had been forced into sex by retired party official Zhang Gaoli, while a guard stood watch outside the door – an abuse of power that left her feeling “like a walking corpse”, she wrote. “I was so scared that afternoon. I never gave consent, crying the entire time.”

Unfortunately for Peng, the man she accused – a married 75-year-old – is also a former vice-premier of the Communist Party’s politburo, and ally of President Xi Jinping. Her post was wiped from the internet within minutes, although screenshots continue to circulate. There have been no confirmed sightings has of Peng in public since. (Zhang has so far made no comment).

Peng Shuai is a household name in China - Reuters

On Wednesday, Chinese state broadcaster CGTN released a mysterious statement it claimed had been written by Peng, in which she reversed her claim of sexual assault, adding: “I’m not missing. I’ve just been resting at home and everything is fine.” It was followed this weekend by purportedly new photos and video footage showing Peng in a Beijing restaurant with friends. China experts have expressed scepticism about the authenticity of both. For Nathan Law, the pro-democracy dissident who fled last year from Hong Kong to London, the statement bears all the hallmarks of a forced confession, a favoured tool of the Chinese authorities. “Whenever a scandal is revealed, Chinese authorities silence or attack the victim,” Law says.

Experts suggest that Peng was probably abducted into the government’s programme of “enforced disappearances”, known officially as RSDL – Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location. Usually, somebody who has criticised the Chinese regime vanishes for several months, while they are interrogated in a nondescript government building. It is not quite as punishing as prison, although some inmates are beaten by guards; others are deprived of sleep. Then, they re-emerge in society with an outwardly different personality, their plucky mode of resistance replaced by a supine deference to Beijing authorities.

The tactic began in the 1990s, but has quickened pace since the 2011 Jasmine Revolution (a crackdown on human rights campaigners), writes Dr Teng Biao, a human rights lawyer, in The People’s Republic of the Disappeared. Fear of a state-ordered van pulling up outside your home in the middle of the night is now the permanent background hum of Chinese politics – always there, but rarely mentioned.

“Everything points towards [Peng] being held in the RSDL system,” says Peter Dahlin, director of the Safeguard Defenders advocacy group. He estimates at least 10,000 people were taken into RSDL last year. “Part of the way they put pressure on you is solitary confinement, which can be incredibly damaging.”

And Dahlin would know – it happened to him. On January 3 2016, he was in his eighth year working at a pro-human rights organisation in Beijing. At 9.45pm, he heard an explosive bang at his door. Uniformed state officers swarmed in. He was blindfolded, along with his girlfriend. They were placed in separate cars and driven to a drab, four-storey former office block.

“[I was] freaking out, trying to figure out how this is going to end,” Dahlin remembers. “Am I looking at prison? Am I going to see my girlfriend? Is she going to end up in prison for the next decade just because she’s with me?”.

He was placed in a rectangular cell with beige padded walls, where he was watched at all times by two expressionless guards, neither of whom ever spoke – though they recorded his every action in a notebook. He was interrogated several times, deprived of sleep, and pressed for details on other human rights activists. He heard the prisoner on the floor above him being violently beaten. “These are padded cells so when you hear someone scream, it sounds like a very low voice, coupled with heavy thumps as someone is thrown into a wall.”

After three weeks, he was told he must confess to a series of crimes. He was ordered to remove his prison uniform and wear his normal clothes, then led into a studio and sat opposite a glamorous state-employed TV presenter. Just out of view of the cameras, officials watched him closely. “I have violated Chinese law,” he said once cameras were rolling, reading from a script. “I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. I apologise sincerely for this.”

Eventually, after 24 days, he was deported to his native Sweden. He thinks diplomatic pressure probably helped his case. Accounts like these are part of the reason why UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom revoked CGTN’s TV licence earlier this year.

Zhang Gaoli has so far not commented on Peng's disappearance - AFP

Peng's disappearance is reverberating through the sporting world. Serena Williams said this week she was “devastated” by the news, adding: “This must be investigated and we must not stay silent.” Andy Murray voiced his concern on Twitter using the #WhereIsPengShuai hashtag. Steve Simon, chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association, said he was prepared to pull tournaments out of China potentially losing tens of millions of dollars.

Also attracting international controversy is the mysterious case of Jack Ma, who before October 24 last year was the richest man in China, and the charismatic owner of Alibaba, “China’s Amazon”. Then he stepped onto a stage in Shanghai and delivered a speech that was critical of the Chinese financial industry. He was quickly summoned to Beijing for “regulatory interviews” - and has not been seen since, except for one bizarre 43-second video, filmed at a stage-managed visit to a rural primary school, and posted online by a Chinese government agency. In it, Ma looks subdued, and says nothing about his business empire. “I have been studying and thinking, and have become more determined to devote myself to education and public welfare,” he says.

A-list celebrities are not immune, either. In 2018, China's most famous actress, Fan Bingbing vanished after being accused of tax evasion, to the consternation of her 63 million social media followers. Four months later, she resurfaced. “I sincerely apologise to society, to the friends who love and care for me, to the people, and to the country’s tax bureau,” she wrote. “Without the party and the country’s great policies... there would be no Fan Bingbing.” She has only spoken since to praise the Communist Party; at one point she even thanked them for detaining her.

It might seem obvious that such seemingly brazen attacks on human rights would provoke anger in the West, but within the sporting world open condemnation of Beijing is the exception rather than the norm. China’s 1.4 billion people represent the fastest-growing market, and sports officials in the US and Europe have often shown a reluctance to say anything that might anger Beijing censors.

“It’s hard doing business in China,” says Dr Jonathan Sullivan, Director of China Programmes at the University of Nottingham. “The rewards are still there, but there is always the risk of making a faux pas that inadvertently ‘hurts the feelings of the Chinese people’ and can kill your brand there in a minute.”

Illustrative was the case of Daryl Morey, manager of the Houston Rockets, an American basketball team, who in October 2019 posted what he believed to be an uncontroversial tweet supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Backlash was swift and severe. The Chinese state broadcaster announced they would stop showing Rockets games to China’s 800 million basketball fans. Chinese finance and fashion firms suspended multi-million dollar sponsorship deals with the team.

Eventually, in a statement written in Mandarin, the US’s National Basketball Association said they were “disappointed” by Morey’s “inappropriate” comment, adding: “He undoubtedly has hurt Chinese fans’ feelings severely.”

Now, perhaps, the wall of silence around such incidents is starting to break. Growing global outrage over Peng's disappearance could prove a turning point, say campaigners, shining a much-needed spotlight on China’s dark tactics. Whether it will do anything to help the tennis player herself, is less certain.