China arrests woman for defamatory comments vs Olympic athletes

China’s Chen Meng (red) and China’s Sun Yingsha (blue) pose with the Chinese flag after their women’s table tennis singles gold medal match at the Paris Olympics 2024 at the South Paris Arena in Paris on August 3, 2024. (Photo by WANG Zhao / AFP)

Police in Beijing said they had arrested a woman for posting defamatory online comments about athletes and coaches in the wake of the women’s singles table tennis final at the Paris Olympics.

The 29-year-old woman, surnamed He, “maliciously fabricated information and openly slandered others”, the Public Security Bureau of Beijing’s Daxing district said in a statement on the X-like Weibo platform on Tuesday.

The statement did not say which athletes and coaches had been targeted and the case remains under investigation, the police said.

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But the arrest followed the women’s singles table tennis finals in Paris on Sunday, police said.

That match saw Chen Meng take gold in an all-China affair against Sun Yingsha.

While Sun received enthusiastic cheers from spectators during the match, Chen was subjected to boos from the crowd and abuse online.

On Sunday, Weibo said it had deleted over 12,000 posts and banned more than 300 accounts following the incident.

In a statement, the website urged users to “keep their focus on the court and comment rationally.”

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Among the deleted posts were those attacking Chen, according to Freeweibo, a website that monitors comments removed by the platform.

One asked her: “The whole country was hoping for Sun Yingsha to win the women’s singles gold, where’s your sense of justice?”

Some posts that featured an image of a Sun fan in Paris appearing to raise their middle finger towards Chen were also taken down.

By Sunday, the trending hashtag “Don’t let fan culture erode Chinese table tennis” had gained over 200 million views on Weibo.

Many other users criticized fans in the stadium and expressed support for Chen.

“Anyone uninformed would have thought Yingsha was playing against a foreign opponent,” read one comment.

Ahead of Paris Olympics, Weibo said it had deleted 8,200 comments and blocked over 500 accounts for “abusive and slanderous” comments about athletes, urging users to cheer for all those competing for China in Paris.

China is the undisputed powerhouse of table tennis and has dominated in Paris.