May the Women's Tennis Association ever prosper.

On November 2, 2021, Peng Shaui, a female pro tennis player from China, announced that she had been raped by a former vice premier and high ranking Communist Party member back in 2018.

Shortly thereafter, the post was deleted, then she herself vanished. A statement purportedly from her was published by the state media two days ago, stating that she hadn't been raped, was fine, really, just taking some time off, thanks, don't worry.

The usual unconvincing platter of lies. 

Yesterday, the Women's Tennis Association responded to Peng's imprisonment.

I am so used to seeing cringing, bowing and scraping before the People's Republic of China that the slightest pushback against the monsters of Beijing deserves a celebratory signal-boost.

But note that the WTA's actions are not "the slightest pushback." 

This is putting money where one's mouth is, something American corporations and institutions never do when it comes to flow of sweet, sweet blood-stained yuan.

None of us should be under any illusions that China will change its behavior due to being publicly shamed in the west. If they cared about that, they wouldn’t have issued a transparently fraudulent “everything’s fine” statement in Peng's name. But having the WTA and its stars call attention to Peng’s disappearance will help further delegitimize the regime in the eyes of westerners who don’t normally pay attention to foreign policy. And it might shame other western institutions that are inclined to keep quiet when China commits crimes in plain sight to acknowledge what’s happening before their eyes. There’s news today that the UN is now demanding proof of Peng’s well-being from Beijing. Would that have happened if the WTA had shrugged off her disappearance as a matter of internal Chinese politics?

Women’s tennis isn’t a mega-bucks business in China the way, say, the NBA is but they’ll be leaving real money on the table if they pull out. Steve Simon, the WTA’s chairman, swung a deal in 2018 that would have seen China hold the WTA Finals every year for the next decade. Nine tournaments were played there in 2019 alone, with room to grow. And Simon is known for his business savvy, per the WSJ. If there’s anyone you might expect to carefully weigh the financial health of his industry against the safety of a single Chinese player, it’s him.

But you’d be doing him a disservice, if so. The second half of the CNN interview embedded at the end of this post is almost shocking in the moral clarity Simon displays by threatening to quit China. “There’s too many times in our world today … that we let business, politics, money dictate what’s right and what’s wrong,” he says at one point. “We have to start as a world making decisions that are based upon right and wrong, period.” And then the real stunner: “This is bigger than the business.”

Bravo to the Association and the athletes for standing up and saying no. Willing to leave money on the table in the process.

As compared to Marriott, which went the usual collaborator route. The American hotel chain behemoth actually used the phrase "political neutrality" in canceling a Uighur conference at one of their hotels.

Congratulations--that earns the profits-not-people chain the Elie Weisel retort:

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.