The WTA has not obtained all the guarantees on the fate of Peng Shuai who found herself at the heart of a state affair and a global crisis after accusing a senior communist leader of her country of having forced her to have sex.

But the leaders of the women's professional circuit have, to hear them, had no choice but to record the return of WTA stamped tournaments from September.

"We concluded that we would never fully achieve our goals and that at the end of the day, it is our players and our tournaments who will pay a high price for their sacrifice," the body said in a statement Thursday.

In the Chinese version of this statement, much shorter than the English version, no mention is made of Peng Shuai, former world No. 1 in doubles, who had disappeared a few days in November 2021 after publishing on the Chinese social network Weibo a long message in which she accused former Vice Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli, 40 years her senior, of sexually assaulting her before making her his mistress.

'Huge disappointment'

Since then, she has reappeared in public several times, including at the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022. At each of his appearances, Peng Shuai was accompanied by regime officials. The WTA says it has obtained "assurances" from relatives of the player that she "lives safely with her family in Beijing".

China's Peng Shuai during the Australian Open, January 13, 2019 in Melbourne © William WEST / AFP/Archives

The WTA's decision was criticized by human rights groups: "This is a huge disappointment for all those who defend human rights in China," Human Rights Watch said.

"This is not surprising, given the amount of money at stake and the balance sheets of other global companies in China."

Sticking only to sport, after two years where China was removed from the world calendar due to covid and travel restrictions, the country has once again become a destination this year for the ATP men's tennis circuit (4 tournaments, including the Shanghai Masters 1000 in October) and for athletics with a stop on the Diamond League World Tour.

10 tournaments in 2019

For the WTA, China has been its main source of funding since 2015 in the wake of the success of Li Na, the first (and only) Chinese to have won a Grand Slam singles title (Roland-Garros 2011 and Australian Open 2014).

In 2019, the last season with normal progress before covid, no less than ten tournaments had been organized in China by the WTA, including the women's Masters at the end of the year which, with $ 14 million, had been better endowed financially than their male equivalents.

For comparison, the endowment of the year-end Women's Masters held in 2021 in Guadalajara (Mexico) and in 2022 in Fort Worth (United States) had dropped to five million dollars.

The Chinese market is the most dynamic in the world, with no less than twenty million players according to figures from the International Tennis Federation (ITF).

"There are five Chinese women among the top 60 in the world (...) with one or two who can aim for a victory in a Grand Slam tournament," said Mark Dreyer, a China-based sports analyst. "China could very well find itself at the forefront of women's tennis soon."

Leaving a court in Shanghai, a player named Sue welcomes the return of the WTA Tour in her country: "There have never been so many people playing tennis, especially among women, everyone is looking forward to seeing professional tennis again," she says.

© 2023 AFP