The message that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sent from its President Thomas Bach's video call to tennis player Peng Shuai on Sunday contains good news: Peng Shuai is alive.
However, that is the only good thing that can be reliably deduced from the video conversation in which the Chinese IOC member Li Lingwei and the chairwoman of the IOC athletes' commission, the Finnish Emma Terho, also took part.
The rest of the message causes dismay when you read it.
What did Peng Shuai say?
The world does not find out, in any case the athlete is not quoted verbatim. Her alleged desire for privacy is paraphrased, as well as her alleged security in Beijing and the alleged concern to spend the coming time with family and friends. Not a single word is mentioned why Peng Shuai has not shown any sign of life for more than two weeks: her allegations against party official Zhang Gaoli of having sexually coerced her.
Instead, the information that Bach would like to have dinner with Peng Shuai in Beijing when he arrives for the Winter Olympics in January.
That shouldn't be a dinner for two either, in addition to Terho, Li Lingwei will also be there.
According to the IOC, their qualification for their participation is the fact that they have known Peng Shuai for a long time.
Readers have a choice: Isn't that excusable naivete or bottomless cynicism?
Bach assured his anticipation
Given the large number of experts who work at the IOC, there are some arguments in favor of the latter. Li Lingwei is vice-chairman of the National Olympic Committee of China, also a political cadre, for example was a member of the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee. China experts said on Monday how shaken Thomas Bach can be harnessed, how he seems to have moved into the role of a compliant helper of the one-party dictatorship after the phone call and the statement that tells about her speechlessness.
Although the athlete claims to be the victim of sexual assault by a high party official, in a sense he now wants to dine with the party. And then celebrate with President Xi Jinping. With the man who takes Hong Kong's freedom, locks Uyghurs and other Muslims in camps in Xinjiang for indoctrination and forced labor, who is imposing his rule on the Chinese like no communist leader since Mao. A "festival of humanity" will then be celebrated, as IOC Executive Director Christophe Dubi recently said.
At the end of October, Bach assured the state television CCTV, Xi's propaganda machine, that he was looking forward to an even closer friendship. So who would seriously expect the IOC President to investigate the allegations in the manner that the Women's Tennis Association has called and continues to demand? As do hundreds of tennis players and many other athletes? And how, not least, the United Nations, with whose cooperation Bach otherwise likes to emphasize the high position of the IOC?
Who would expect that this IOC president would at least give tennis player Peng Shuai, who has participated in the Olympic Games three times, the opportunity to speak freely? Thomas Bach's telephone campaign works like securing the joint festival with China's rulers. He accepts that keen observers must suspect that Peng Shuai is still under the control of the party, whose high-ranking official accuses her of sexually abusing her.
The world must assume that Peng Shuai will be left alone, that almost three weeks after the allegations became known, the IOC is not doing everything in its power to clear them up.
With all understanding for the constraints of diplomacy: Bach should not have given rise to this impression.
He reinforces the suspicion that the IOC will abandon its athletes, who will be in the care of the dictator for the winter games in Beijing from the end of January, if there is any doubt.