Julien Chen was getting ready for bed when he learned that one of his favorite Chinese tennis players, Peng Shuai, had made #MeToo allegations against a powerful Chinese official.
A friend told him to check Peng’s social media account. "There’s a ‘huge melon’ in the tennis circle,” the friend wrote, using the Chinese metaphor for a bombshell.
Chen could not find anything. He searched the word "tennis,” but Peng — one of China’s most famous athletes — appeared in barely any results. With stunning efficiency, China’s censors had begun scrubbing references to her allegations from the internet.
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