Peng Shuai meets IOC president, denies sexual assault allegations

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Chinese and international Olympic officials attempted to quell the country’s biggest controversy over #MeToo on Monday, as details of two carefully controlled confrontations with tennis star Peng Shuai on day four of the Beijing Winter Games were announced.

Ping, a three-time Olympian, claimed in a social media post in November that she had at least one non-consensual sexual encounter and an on-and-off relationship with Zhang Gaoli, the 75-year-old former Chinese vice premier who oversaw that. Preparations for the games. The post was deleted shortly after it was posted.

Ping, 36, told French sports newspaper L’Equipe that she “never said anyone sexually assaulted me in any way” in her first sitting interview since the controversy broke out. L’Equipe said many of her questions were scrutinized and that Peng spoke in the presence of a representative from the Chinese Olympic Committee.

Bing also said she deleted the post on social media, not the censors. “There was a huge misunderstanding in the outside world after this post…I don’t want any more media hype about it,” she said.

Separately, the International Olympic Committee said Thomas Bach, the organization’s president, met Ping for dinner on Saturday night. The International Olympic Committee, which hinted on Sunday that the meeting had not yet taken place, did not mention the controversy over Ping’s allegations.

Bach made a video call to Peng shortly after the accusations were made and she largely disappeared from view. The International Olympic Committee said Ping had agreed to meet Bach over dinner during the Games.

Mark Adams, a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, defended the decision to issue a statement acknowledging the dinner two days after the event rather than asking him about it on Sunday. The IOC “issued the statement this morning because we have the statement ready, it’s that simple,” he said, adding that it was “not a judgment on the IOC” on whether Peng had been assaulted.

Adams said the IOC did not provide corroborative evidence at the dinner because the presence of a photographer “wasn’t really conducive” to attracting the Chinese tennis player to meet.

Video: Tennis: Players fight for a tie

He said the IOC was “doing everything we can in these circumstances just to see it”. We started with, ‘Where’s Peng Shuai? We found her. ‘How is she?’ We started talking to her. Now we have met her in person…As a sports organisation, I would say we are doing a very good job dealing with these issues.”

Bach was accompanied by another IOC member, but the organization did not say whether Chinese officials had joined Ping. The three agreed to leave no further communication regarding the meeting [Peng’s] The International Olympic Committee said.

Yang Xuan, vice-chairman of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee, denied any involvement. “We are only focusing on gaming operations,” he told reporters.

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Peng’s post about Zhang appeared on her verified Weibo account and sparked yet another international controversy for the Chinese government and the International Olympic Committee ahead of the Games.

A number of Western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Olympics due to Beijing’s illegal detention of more than one million Uyghur Muslims in China’s northwest Xinjiang region.

Chinese officials insisted that the camps are part of the vocational education system needed to combat religious extremism in Xinjiang.

In an apparent defiance of international condemnation of what human rights and other activists have called the “Genocide Games,” Chinese Olympic officials drafted an ethnic Uyghur member of their cross-country ski team to help light the Olympic flame at last week’s opening ceremony.

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