The WTA, the governing body for women’s tennis, is set to announce a return to China, ending its 16-month suspension following the sexual assault allegations made by one of its players against a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party member, according to a WTA statement provided to Sports Illustrated. That player, Peng Shuai, disappeared for two and a half weeks after posting her claims, and though the one-time Chinese standout has made a handful of highly curated public appearances since, her current level of freedom remains in doubt.
A full slate of tournaments will resume this fall, including the tour’s crown jewel, the WTA Finals, held in Shenzhen. The tour has struggled financially since leaving China; the season-ending Shenzhen event previously accounted for the greatest source of the WTA’s overall annual revenue, more than $20 million in various fees. WTA chairman and CEO Steve Simon tells SI, “This is obviously a change in direction from us. But continuing and continuing with the same strategy also doesn’t make sense, and a different approach is needed.”
In November 2021, Peng, then an active WTA player, posted on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, a detailed account of being sexually assaulted at the hands of Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China and a high-ranking member of the CCP. Within half an hour, her post was scrubbed, and Chinese censors blocked users from searching Peng by name—and eventually even the term “tennis.”
