What drives high-profile disappearances in China?
Tennis star reportedly is missing after accusing Communist Party official of sexual assault
Beijing(AP): The disappearance of tennis star Peng Shuai in China following her accusation of sexual assault against a former top Communist Party official has shined a spotlight on similar cases involving political dissidents, entertainers, business leaders and others who have run afoul of the authorities.
A look at those cases and the background on such actions.
What happened to Peng Shuai?
Despite an outcry in the tennis world and global media, Chinese officials have not directly addressed the accusation posted online by Grand Slam doubles champion Peng more than two weeks ago.
Peng said she was sexually assaulted by Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier and member of the party's all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee.
Peng, 35, is a former No. 1-ranked player in women's doubles who won titles at Wimbledon in 2013 and the French Open in 2014. She also participated in three Olympics, making her disappearance all the more prominent with Beijing set to host the Winter Games starting Feb. 4.
Peng wrote in a lengthy social media post on Nov. 2 that Zhang had forced her to have sex three years ago, despite her repeated refusals.
The post was quickly deleted from her verified account on Weibo, a leading Chinese social media platform, but screenshots of the explosive accusation quickly spread across China's internet.
Why do people disappear in China?
China says it is a nation ruled by law," but the Communist Party ultimately holds sway and there are large gray areas of enforcement.
Control over the press and social media allows authorities to keep word of disappearances quiet and to stonewall critics, although such news often gradually surfaces through underground and foreign sources.
Among Chinese celebrities in the entertainment world, tangling with the authorities can be a career killer.
For business leaders, it can mean a loss of status, market access and possible incarceration. With political dissidents, it often means disappearance into the vast security state, without access to family or legal recourse.
Even before taking power in 1949, the Communist Party underwent numerous rounds of vicious internecine struggles during which those on the losing side were disposed of without due process.
The 1966-76 Cultural Revolution saw politicians, educators and musicians locked up for years without charge, often in solitary confinement.
Today, the party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection handles most major charges against ranking officials, who may drop out of sight for months before a terse statement is issued saying they are under investigation for severe violations of rules and regulations." Heavy sentences are later announced, with little or no details given about the charges or the evidence brought against them.
What famous people have gone missing?
Notable people who have dropped from sight under circumstances that remain unclear include business leader Jack Ma and famous actress Fan Bingbing.
Ma, China's most prominent entrepreneur and the founder of Alibaba Group, the world's biggest e-commerce company, stopped appearing in public after he criticized regulators as being too conservative in an October 2020 speech.
Days later, the government ordered Ma's Ant Group, a financial service that grew out of Alibaba's online payments business, to suspend a planned stock market debut in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Rumors on social media questioned whether Ma had been detained. Friends of Ma reportedly said he wasn't detained but decided to stay quiet following criticism of his comments.
Ma reappeared two months later in a January 2020 video released by Alibaba but made no mention of his disappearance.
Fan disappeared for three months before news emerged that tax authorities had ordered her and companies she represented to pay taxes and penalties totaling 130 million.
People can drop off the map if they are linked to disputes with the politically well-connected involving business and reputation.
Businesswoman Duan Weihong disappeared in 2017 and her husband, Desmond Shum, said he didn't hear from her for four years until he was preparing to publish a book about corruption among Chinese elites. Shum told Time magazine his wife begged him in a phone call not to publish his book, Red Roulette.
Duan, also known as Whitney Duan, was cited by The New York Times in a 2012 series of articles about the family wealth of then-Premier Wen Jiabao, China's No. 2 leader. It remains unclear what exactly prompted her disappearance.
A real estate mogul, Ren Zhiqiang, disappeared from public view in March 2020 after criticising President Xi Jinping's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Ren was sentenced later that year to 18 years in prison on corruption charges.
What other kinds of people disappear?
In a rare case that appeared in the open, Swedish citizen Gui Minhai disappeared in 2015, when he was believed to have been abducted by Chinese agents from his seaside home in Thailand.
He and four others who worked for the same Hong Kong company that published books critical of the Communist Party all went missing at about the same time and turned up months later in police custody in mainland China.
A court in eastern China later sentenced him to 10 years in prison for illegally providing intelligence overseas.
China has also snatched some foreigners.
Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained in China in December 2018, shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, on a U.S. extradition request.
China delayed announcing their detentions for days, then denied that the arrests were linked.
The two were released in September after Meng was allowed to return to China.
Even a scientist, gene-editing researcher He Jiankui, disappeared from public view for almost a year after announcing his controversial research at a conference in Hong Kong.
He was eventually convicted of practicing medicine without a license in December 2019.
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Congress not just removed clothes at AI Summit but exposed its intellectual bankruptcy: PM Modi
New Delhi (PTI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday came down heavily on the Congress for the shirtless protest by its youth wing members at the AI Impact Summit recently, saying the opposition party can tear as many clothes as it wants, but his government will continue to work for the country's progress.
Addressing the News18 Rising Bharat Summit, Modi also said that the Congress did not just remove its clothes in front of foreign guests but also exposed its intellectual bankruptcy, asserting that the millennials have already taught the country's oldest party a lesson, and now Gen-Z is ready to do the same.
In an apparent jibe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Modi said the opposition was unhappy seeing the statue of "Babbar Shers" (lions) installed atop the new Parliament building, but their own “Babbar Shers" were running away after facing the "shoes" of the general public.
Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, had said on February 24 that he was proud of the "Babbar Shers" of the Indian Youth Congress, who "fearlessly" raised their voice at the AI Summit.
"Congress ke Babbar Sher logon ki jute kha ke bhaag gaye (The 'lions' of Congress ran away after being hit by shoes by the public)," Modi said.
The prime minister was apparently referring to the protesting Youth Congress workers being heckled by some people at the AI Summit.
On February 20, a group of Indian Youth Congress (IYC) workers staged a dramatic protest inside Hall No. 5 of the summit venue in Delhi by removing their shirts to reveal T-shirts printed with anti-government slogans, triggering a political slugfest between the BJP and the Congress.
“Congress can tear as many clothes as it wants, but we will continue to work for India's development. Congress not just shed clothes at the AI Summit, it also exposed its incapabilities in front of foreign guests,” Modi said in his nearly 45-minute speech.
He said the AI Summit was a moment of pride for the entire nation, but unfortunately, Congress attempted to tarnish this national celebration.
"When the frustration and despair of failure weigh on the mind, and arrogance makes one's head spin, such a mindset emerges to defame the country," he said.
The prime minister also alleged that the Congress always takes refuge in Mahatma Gandhi to hide its failures, but tries to give credit to one family for anything good.
"People of our country welcomed every good step taken by our government, but the Congress only knows how to oppose everything. The votes of Congress are not stolen; rather, people do not consider Congress worthy of their votes. Millennials first taught a lesson to Congress, now Gen-Z is ready to do the same," he said.
Modi also said that in a democracy, the role of the opposition is not just about blindly opposing every move of the government, but presenting an alternative vision, and that is why the "enlightened public" of the country is "teaching a lesson" to Congress now.
In 1984, the Congress got 39 per cent of the votes and more than 400 seats. But its votes declined consistently in the subsequent elections, Modi said.
"Today, the condition of the Congress is such that it has more than 50 MLAs in just four states. Over the past 40 years, the number of young voters in the country has increased, but the Congress has clearly diminished," Modi said.
On the recent trade deals that India signed with foreign countries, Modi said the country has discovered its inherent strength and strengthened its institutions, which prompted developed nations to come forward and sign deals with India.
He also said that even after Independence, some people ensured that the colonial mindset remained for their own benefits.
"No country would have done trade deals with us had we not discovered our inherent strength and strengthened our institutions. Because of this, developed nations have come forward to sign trade deals (with India)," he said.
Modi also said that even after Independence, India was unable to break free from the mentality of slavery, for which the country is still paying the price.
"The latest example of this can be seen in the ongoing discussions on trade deals. Some people are shocked – ‘what has happened, how did this happen? Why are developed countries so eager to do trade deals with India?’ The answer is – a confident India is emerging from despair and frustration," he said.
Over the long span of history, centuries of slavery had instilled a feeling of inferiority, while the ideology imported from other countries deeply ingrained in society the notion that Indians were uneducated and subservient, the prime minister said.
"If the country was still mired in the despair of the pre-2014 era, counted among the 'Fragile Five', and gripped by policy paralysis, who would strike a trade deal with us?
"Over the past 11 years, a new surge of energy has flowed into the nation's consciousness. India is now striving to reclaim its lost potential," Modi said.
The prime minister also said that due to the recent series of reforms initiated by his government, the world's most powerful nations are now coming forward to sign trade deals with India.
"There was a time when India was only a consumer of new technology. But now we are not just developing them, but also setting standards," he said.
The prime minister also said that India's digital public infrastructure has become a subject of global discussion today, and every move India makes is closely watched and analysed across the world.
"The AI Summit was a clear example of this," he said.
The government's 'Viksit Bharat by 2047' is not a political slogan but an effort to correct the mistakes of the previous Congress governments by making India self-reliant, he said.
“So far, in every industrial revolution, India and the Global South largely remained followers, but in this age of artificial intelligence (AI), India is not only participating but is also shaping it. India now has its own AI startup ecosystem,” Modi said.
He also said the world is astonished that India, where around 30 million families lived in darkness until 2014, has now risen to become one of the top countries in solar power capacity.
India, where many cities had no hope of improving their public transport system, has now become the country with the world's third-largest Metro network, Modi said.
“The Indian Railways was known only for chronic delays and sluggish speeds, yet semi-high-speed connectivity like Vande Bharat and Namo Bharat has now become possible,” he said.
Nation-building never happens through short-term thinking; it is shaped by a long-term vision, patience and timely decisions, the prime minister added.
