This time, the world of women’s tennis isn’t playing along and has suggested it will stop holding events in China until it is sure Ms. Peng is truly free of government control. The biggest names in tennis — Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic, among many others — don’t seem to be afraid to lose access to a potential market of 1.4 billion tennis fans either. The pushback is problematic because the Winter Olympics in Beijing are just weeks away from opening.
The country’s huge army of propagandists has failed its top leader Xi Jinping’s expectations that it take control of the global narrative about China. But it shouldn’t take all the blame: The failure is ingrained in the controlling nature of China’s authoritarian system.
“It can make Peng Shuai play any role, including putting up a show of being free,” Pin Ho, a New York-based media businessman, wrote on Twitter.
For Chinese officials in charge of crisis management, he continued, such control is routine. “But for the free world,” he said, “this is even more frightening than forced confessions.”
One of the biggest giveaways that Ms. Peng isn’t free to speak her mind is that her name remains censored on the Chinese internet.
“As long as coverages about her inside and outside China are different, she’s not speaking freely,” said Rose Luqiu, an assistant professor of journalism at the Hong Kong Baptist University.