Beijing, Dec 19 (AFP): Fresh unverified footage of Peng Shuai was posted online by a state-affiliated journalist on Sunday as international concern persists for the Chinese tennis star after she publicly accused a former vice-premier of forcing her to have sex.<\/p>\n
Qingqing Chen, a reporter for the state-owned Global Times, tweeted a video of Peng appearing to speak with Chinese basketball icon Yao Ming.<\/p>\n
Chen said the video was sent to her by a “friend” and that it was taken at an event to promote cross-country skiing in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
The seven-second clip shows the tennis player smiling and listening as Yao speaks indistinctly.<\/p>\n
Chen also posted a photo of Peng posing with Yao and two other Chinese sports figures \u2014 Olympic sailing champion Xu Lijia and retired table tennis player Wang Liqin.<\/p>\n
The foursome were standing next to a banner for the “FIS Cross-Country Skiing China City Tour” with Shanghai’s Yangpu bridge in the background.<\/p>\n
The Shanghai stop of the cross-country ski tour took place on Saturday, according to the state-run CGTN news site.<\/p>\n
Twitter is blocked in China and only people with a VPN-type workaround can access it.<\/p>\n
However, many Chinese diplomats and official state media have accounts to defend China’s point of view.<\/p>\n
Peng, a former Wimbledon and French Open doubles champion, took to Chinese social media in early November to allege that former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli \u2014 who is in his 70s \u2014 forced her into sex during an on-off relationship spanning several years.<\/p>\n
Her message was quickly scrubbed from the Chinese web, but not before screenshots were posted on Twitter, sparking a worldwide outcry.<\/p>\n
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has called for Peng’s allegations to be investigated fully and transparently.<\/p>\n
The sporting body announced earlier this month that it was suspending all tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, over concerns about Peng’s safety.<\/p>\n
State media have previously published other images of Peng at a Beijing tennis tournament as well as a screenshot of an email allegedly written by the player saying “everything is fine”.<\/p>\n
Peng also participated in late November in a 30-minute video call with Thomas Bach, head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).<\/p>\n
But the WTA and fellow tennis players have continued to call for more transparency from Beijing over Peng’s whereabouts.<\/p>\n
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Beijing, Dec 19 (AFP): Fresh unverified footage of Peng Shuai was posted online by a state-affiliated journalist on Sunday as international concern persists for the Chinese tennis star after she publicly accused a former vice-premier of forcing her to have sex. Qingqing Chen, a reporter for the state-owned Global Times, tweeted a video of Peng […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-179725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}