Beijing 2022/Peng Shuai: "The IOC is playing into the hands of the Chinese government" (J-B Guégan)

"The IOC is playing into the hands of the Chinese government, less than three months before the Beijing Winter Olympics (04-20/02/2022), by staging a video between Thomas Bach, its president, and Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai. The IOC is helping to bring down the media pressure. The alliance is opportune and the convergence of interests is difficult to accept because it legitimises Beijing's coercive action. We are seemingly far from the values defended by the Olympic world," said Jean-Baptiste Guégan, teacher and author of several books on the geopolitics of sport and the economics of football, to News Tank Football on 22/11/2021.

Thomas Bach (GER) spoke in a video call with Peng Shuai, according to the IOC on Sunday 21/11/2021. At the same time, Chinese state media reporters relayed videos of the player dining in the city and attending a tennis tournament. Prior to these signs of life, Peng Shuai, who accused a senior Chinese Communist Party official, former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, of sexual assault on 02/11/2021, had abruptly disappeared.

"We are in a political moment in…