Five years ago this week, Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai posted a message on Weibo – the Chinese equivalent of Facebook – that would have far-reaching implications both for her and the sport.

Peng’s claims that she had been sexually harassed by Zhang Gaoli, a former vice-premier in the Chinese Communist Party, would precipitate her disappearance from public view – and prompt the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) to cancel its events in China in protest.

This week, the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai? is likely to return to social media, as tennis fans express their frustration at the opacity of the Chinese regime.

While it remains plausible that Peng is constrained by her unusual situation, Telegraph Sport understands that she is alive and looks to be healthy. According to sources who insisted on anonymity:

• Peng was spotted in public at a pickleball event in Beijing in April

• She lives quietly in Beijing at an address known only to a few close confidantes

• One reason for her ongoing obscurity is that other Chinese players cut ties with her

• The WTA’s grandstanding decision to cancel all events in China has been the biggest single factor in the organisation’s recent financial struggles.

The post that erupted a diplomatic storm

To sketch the outlines of the story, Peng is a former top-20 singles player who also reached world No 1 in ladies’ doubles – a format in which she won the 2013 Wimbledon title, and French Open crown the following year.

On November 2, 2021, she sent her fateful message, in which she claimed to have had a lengthy on-off affair with former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli. It was described at the time as the most serious “Me Too” issue to have emerged from China, as it was the first to involve a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official.

While the 1,600-word post had certain ambiguities, it seemed to suggest that Peng had first become intimate with Gaoli in Tianjin 10 years earlier, and then went on to say that – after multiple visits to his gated apartment complex in Beijing – their most recent sexual encounter had been coercive.

“That afternoon, I was very afraid,” she wrote. “I didn’t expect it to be like this. I didn’t agree to have sex with you and kept crying that afternoon.” Later in the post, she added that “You played with me, and dumped me when you were done with me.”

Peng’s ‘controlled’ appearances and a China boycott

The post was only visible for around 20 minutes before it was taken down. Soon after that, Peng herself dropped out of contact with the outside world, prompting WTA chief executive Steve Simon to demand a “full, fair and transparent investigation” and to call for China to “end censorship against Peng”. While Peng’s very existence was airbrushed from the Chinese internet, the Weibo network banned the word “wangqiu”, which means tennis.

Around a week later, videos and photographs of Peng began to emerge via controlled sources such as the China Open’s Weibo account. She was shown at her home, at a restaurant, and signing oversized tennis balls for children at Beijing’s National Tennis Centre. Yet the apparent controlled nature of the content failed to satisfy anyone beyond Chinese loyalists, and the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai proliferated on social media, with support from leading players including the “Big Four” of the men’s game: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray.

Behind the scenes, Simon had reached a momentous decision: he would cancel the 10 events staged in China, including the lucrative WTA Finals in Shenzhen, unless a full investigation was carried out, and Peng was allowed to communicate directly with Simon and his team.

Although the boycott duly went ahead, it was abandoned after fewer than 18 months when it became clear that the Chinese regime was unmoved. Announcing the climbdown in April 2023, the WTA chief said: “We have received assurances from people who are close to [Peng] … that she is safe and living with her family in Beijing.”

Nevertheless, the cancellation of the Shenzhen deal for the WTA Finals – which was originally meant to last 10 seasons, starting in 2019, but managed only one edition – would have far-reaching consequences. Insiders say that Shenzhen was worth about $10m (£7.5m) to the WTA annually in license fee alone. Not only have the Finals struggled to find a satisfactory home since then, but – as Telegraph Sport revealed in September – the resulting financial turbulence has created a threat of bankruptcy at the WTA.

The one and only global interview

Peng’s communications with the outside world have been extremely limited over the past five years, and there have been none since David Haggerty – the president of the International Tennis Federation – said he had spoken to her in August 2022.

Since the original Weibo post, Peng has stressed that she never explicitly claimed to have suffered a sexual assault, and that the subsequent fallout was the result of a misunderstanding. Her retractions have been met with scepticism, however. Because there has been such limited access to her, and because she has not been seen outside China, many assume that she is acting under duress.

While no visitor has spoken to Peng in an unmediated environment since 2021, the closest thing would be L’Equipe’s hour-long interview with her at a Beijing hotel during the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Speaking to Telegraph Sport about that meeting, Marc Ventouillac – L’Equipe’s experienced athletics correspondent and the man who interviewed Peng – admitted that he thought “there was one chance in 12 million that my request would come off”. But he was selected by the Chinese authorities to carry out the only interview conducted by a Western journalist since the original scandal broke.

Describing the process, Ventouillac stresses that he was allowed to ask any questions he wished, and that his copy was not vetted before publication. After some 20 minutes of chatting with Peng about the Winter Olympics, he switched the subject to the Gaoli affair. Although Peng was wearing a face-mask because of Covid restrictions – which made it harder to read her expression – he recalls that “I could see in her eyes she was being more cautious with her answers”. The content, though, remained the same as in her previous interview with the Singapore-based title Lianhe Zaobao, with Peng insisting that her original post had been misinterpreted.

Her most recent public appearance revealed

All of which brings us to April 9, 2026, and an event which might seem an unlikely place for a rare sighting of Peng herself. This was the JOOLA Pickleball Titans Tour, which found Ben Johns, the world’s top-ranked player, performing exhibitions at Beijing’s National Tennis Centre with tennis power couple Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. Well-placed sources say that Peng was seen with friends in the crowd, although she did not appear in any official capacity.

It is also the case that, during the 18 months or so when WTA tournaments in China were suspended, local players lost opportunities to earn prize money, receive wild cards, compete for ranking points and develop their careers in familiar surroundings. Some were even forced to relocate overseas during this period, all of which may contribute to a desire to draw a line under the saga.

Although one sighting is better than none, many questions remain unanswered about Peng Shuai’s freedom and personal circumstances. The mystery seems unlikely to be solved in the short term, or perhaps at all.