The Lawfare Podcast: Peng Shuai
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
On November 2, the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai publicly accused on social media a former vice-premier of China of sexual assault. Chinese authorities responded by taking down her posts and engaging in a mass campaign of censorship on Chinese social media. Later on, Peng disappeared from public view, prompting many tennis stars, athletes and others to demand answers about where she was. It's a long saga that ended with the Women's Tennis Association suspending all tournaments in China in a major move that cut against the trend of Western companies ignoring abuses committed at the hands of the Chinese government. Jacob Schulz sat down with Julian Ku, the Maurice A. Deane Distinguished Professor in Constitutional Law and Professor of Law at Hofstra University, and Katrina Northrop, a reporter at The Wire China, to talk through what's happened to Peng Shuai and what to make of it.