Women are severely underrepresented in national politics: There is one woman on the 25-member Politburo. Things have only worsened under President Xi Jinping, architect of a state-run masculinity campaign. Peng’s case is the rare, revelatory moment that exposes how much China’s all-male rulers depend on the subjugation of women to ensure the Communist Party’s longevity. While the patriarchal nature of Chinese society is well known, Ms. And so a domestic #MeToo scandal exploded into an international cause célèbre. Its actions hit an already aching, raw nerve. But what the party apparently failed to take into consideration is the current women’s-rights climate in China. Such moves from the authoritarian playbook tend to succeed in silencing dissent. Peng’s allegations: They were a clear attempt by the Chinese Communist Party to protect itself and its legitimacy in the eyes of the people. That might help explain the heavy-handed reaction to Ms. But her allegations also are groundbreaking: They are the first to implicate such a high-ranking Chinese official, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s highest ruling body. Peng’s celebrity certainly has driven interest in her case. THE RUSE FREEPeng’s disappearance, citing “serious doubts” that she was free and safe. THE RUSE PROFESSIONALSteve Simon, the chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association, said on Wednesday that the women’s professional tennis tour would suspend all tournaments in China, including in Hong Kong, in response to Ms. If Beijing thought those measures would settle matters, it was sorely mistaken. Peng safe and sound: at a restaurant cuddling a cat signing children’s tennis balls at a teenagers’ tournament. THE RUSE SERIESBut then state-controlled media released a series of bizarre images and videos purporting to show Ms. Peng’s whereabouts at Chinese Foreign Ministry briefings. In the following hours, netizens logged nearly seven million searches for the post. Peng’s name on the Chinese internet and deleted the post, but not before it was shared around 1,000 times. State censors quickly restricted searches for Ms. “Like an egg hitting a rock, or a moth to the flame, courting self-destruction, I’ll tell the truth about you,” she wrote in a lengthy post on Weibo, China’s popular social media platform. 2, Peng Shuai, a former Wimbledon doubles champion, accused China’s former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Instead of squashing a scandal, it is fueling China’s feminist movement - it could ultimately pose a challenge to the party itself. Yet the Chinese Communist Party’s choreographed response to a tennis star’s sexual assault allegations has backfired spectacularly. And unsurprisingly, the government there is trying to silence the dissent. Four years after the #MeToo movement rocked global halls of power, one of its most politically consequential cases to date is unfolding in the unlikeliest of places: China.
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