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This month’s censorship and disappearance of tennis star Peng Shuai, after she revealed a relationship with former vice premier Zhang Gaoli and accused him of sexual assault, has fast become a case in point. Sports brands and organisations that have been selling to the Chinese population in the past decade have either been caught in the middle or tried to place themselves there. Most upsetting have been the abuses of Uyghur people in Xinjiang, which several countries, including the US, have officially denoted as genocide. Instead, with an Olympic return to Beijing scheduled for the Winter Games of 2022, Xi Jinping’s government has taken a harder line on diplomacy and domestic policy, cracking down on pro-democracy campaigns in Hong Kong and policing foreign relations with Taiwan. In the years that followed, China’s apparent openness to international investment and culture, and the willingness of its own companies to spend overseas, might have hinted at an arc towards that kind of progress. The argument then was that in the spirit of partnership – and commerce – the Chinese government’s practices would steadily improve. When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded its 2008 Games to Beijing, it did so in spite of anxiety about the state’s repressive tendencies. What happens to a line in the sand when the tide comes in?