When the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accused a former top leader of sexual assault earlier this month, the authorities turned to a tried-and-true strategy. At home, the country’s censors scrubbed away any mention of the allegations. Abroad, a few state-affiliated journalists focused narrowly on trying to quash concerns about Ms. Peng’s safety.

中国网球明将彭帅本月早些时候指控一名中共前高官性侵后，当局采取了一个屡试不爽的计策。在国内，中国的审查员们将任何提及这个指控的信息悉数删除。在国外，几名隶属于政府部门的记者专心致志地试图平息对彭帅安全的担忧。

Beijing seems to be relying on a two-pronged approach of maintaining the silence and waiting for the world to move on. The approach suggests that the country’s sprawling propaganda apparatus has limited options for shifting the narrative without drawing more attention to the uncomfortable allegations Beijing hopes would just disappear.

中国政府似乎在依赖双管齐下的做法，一边保持沉默，一边等待世界转换话题。这个做法表明，在改变叙事、避免将更多注意力吸引到北京希望尽快消失的那些令人不安的指控方面，中国庞大的宣传机器选择有限。

On China’s social media platforms and other digital public squares, the censors’ meticulous work has left almost no sign that Ms. Peng had ever accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier, of sexual assault. Like a museum to a previous reality, her social media account remains, without new updates or comments.

在中国的社交媒体平台和其他数字公共空间，审查员的细致工作让人们几乎看不到彭帅曾经指控前副总理张高丽性侵的任何痕迹。彭帅的社交媒体帐号仍在，但没有更新或评论，就像是座博物馆展示着过去的现实。

These tactics have worked for China in the past, at least at home. In recent years, officials have relied on heavy censorship and a nationalistic narrative of Western meddling to deflect blame for issues including the outbreak of Covid-19 to human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

中国的这些做法此前一直奏效，至少在国内是这样。近年来，官员们一直借助严格的审查以及指责西方干涉中国内政的民族主义叙事，来转移国外对新冠病毒最初的暴发和新疆侵犯人权等问题的批评。

This time, though, the #MeToo accusation from a lauded and patriotic athlete implicating a top leader has no simple solution from Beijing’s propaganda toolbox. Any new narrative would most likely have to acknowledge the allegations in the first place and require the approval of top Chinese leaders.

但这次，北京的宣传工具箱中没有简单的解决方案去对付来自曾受赞扬的爱国运动员对一位中国高级领导人的“我也是”指控。任何新叙事几乎肯定要先承认这个指控，但这需要得到中国最高领导人的批准。

“The central propaganda bureau does not dare go out on its own about a former Standing Committee member,” said Deng Yuwen, a former editor of a Communist Party newspaper, referring to Mr. Zhang’s position in the body that holds ultimate power in the party. “It would have to be approved by Xi Jinping.”

“中宣部关于前常委自己不敢（擅自主张），”曾任党报编辑的邓聿文说，他指的是张高丽以前在中共最高权力机构中的位置。“一定要习近平同意的。”

“For them, this is not just a propaganda matter, but also an issue of national security,” continued Mr. Deng, who now lives in the United States.

“对他们来说，这事情不但是一个宣传问题，而且是一个国安事件。”现居美国的邓聿文接着说道。

The level of censorship Beijing deployed to shut down discussion of Ms. Peng’s allegation has little precedent, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.

在加州大学伯克利分校信息学院从事研究的科学家萧强说，中国政府在停止有关彭帅指控的讨论上部署的审查力度几乎前所未有。

To the Chinese authorities, the plan of action for now appears to be one of inaction. On overseas sites like Twitter and Facebook that are blocked in China, the response has been muted and fragmentary. When Beijing-backed journalists have addressed Ms. Peng on overseas social media sites, they have studiously avoided mentioning the nature of her accusations, or their target.

对中国当局来说，目前的计划似乎是以不变应万变。在Twitter和Facebook等在中国被屏蔽的海外网站上，官方的回应较为低调且零散。得到中国政府支持的记者在海外社交媒体网站谈论彭帅时，总是刻意避免提及彭帅指控的性质或指控的对象。

Instead, they have sought to put an end to the questions about Ms. Peng’s whereabouts, releasing photos and videos of the tennis star that seemed designed to show that she was safe despite having disappeared from public life. Ms. Peng also appeared in a live video call with the leader of the International Olympic Committee that only raised more concerns.

他们反而试图让人们不再追问彭帅的下落，他们发的照片和视频似乎旨在表明这位网球名将是安全的，尽管她已从公众视野中消失。彭帅曾出现在与国际奥林匹克委员会主席的实时视频通话中，但那只是引发了更多的担忧。

To some, the apparent stage-managing of Ms. Peng was a reminder of the authorities’ use of forced confessions and other video testimony from detainees for propaganda. In 2019, a state run news service ran a “proof of life” video of Abdurehim Heyit, a prominent Uyghur folk poet and musician, to quell international concerns that he had died in an internment camp.

在一些人眼里，视频通话中的彭帅明显经过了编排指导，让人想起当局为了达到宣传目的，使用来自被拘押者的被迫认罪和其他证词视频的做法。2019年，一家官方新闻机构曾播放证明著名维吾尔族民间诗人和音乐家阿卜都热衣木·艾衣提“还活着”的视频，以平息国际社会对他已死于一个拘禁营的担忧。

When Peter Dahlin, a Swedish activist, was detained by the authorities in 2016, he was forced to speak in a Chinese propaganda video about his so-called crimes. He said in a recent interview that he saw the state media’s gradual release of photos and videos of Ms. Peng as evidence that Beijing was monitoring her movements mainly to silence her while waiting for the outcry to die down.

瑞典活动人士彼得·达林2016年被中国当局拘留期间，曾被迫在中国的一段宣传视频中讲述他的所谓罪行。达林在最近一次采访中说，他把官方媒体断断续续发布彭帅的照片和视频的做法，视为北京正在监控其活动的证据，这主要是为了让她沉默，同时等待强烈的抗议声平息下去。

“She is obviously under custodial control,” Mr. Dahlin said. “Everything she does will be scripted from beginning to end; she will be told exactly what to do, how to act, how to smile.”

“她显然处于监控之下，”达林说。“她做的每件事从头到尾都是编排指导的结果；她会被确切地告知该做什么，该怎么做，该怎么笑。”

A waiting game has helped Beijing defang attacks from individual critics in the past, be they dissidents or sports stars. When Hao Haidong, a retired Chinese soccer star, called for the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020, officials purged records of his career and waited as he faded from memory. Though Ms. Peng brings more international backing, Chinese officials may be betting the social media cycle of shock and anger will eventually dissipate.

这种看谁能坚持更久的游戏以前曾帮助北京化解了来自个体批评者的抨击，无论他们是异见人士还是体育明星。中国退役足球明星郝海东2020年呼吁推翻中共后，官员们删除了互联网上其职业生涯的全部记录，等着他从人们的记忆中消失。虽然彭帅得到了更多的国际支持，但中国官员可能正在押赌，社交媒体上的震惊和愤怒周期最终会消失。

For Beijing, the concern is that the blowback could interfere with the upcoming Winter Olympics, which China is hosting.

北京担心的是，反冲效应可能会干扰即将到来的冬季奥运会，中国是这届冬奥会的主办国。

“They have to placate not just the usual critics in the West, but also decidedly apolitical tennis stars and sporting associations overseas, while at the same time burying all mention of Ms. Peng’s original charge,” said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Australia and author of “The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers.”

“他们需要安抚的不只是西方的惯常批评者，还需要安抚绝对不问政治的网球明星和海外体育协会，同时还要掩埋所有提及彭帅最初指控的东西，”澳大利亚洛伊研究所高级研究员、《中共：中国共产统治者的秘密世界》一书的作者马利德(Richard McGregor)说。

“It’s no surprise that the propaganda system is floundering,” he said.

“这让宣传部门陷入困境并不奇怪，”马利德说。

In a strange turn, the only recent post about Ms. Peng that remains on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, is from the French Embassy in China. It calls on Beijing to respect its commitments to combating violence against women. But the seemingly curated comments on the post accused France of meddling in China’s affairs. Along similar lines, some Chinese journalists took to Western social media sites to question the motives of those who expressed concern about Ms. Peng.

有点奇怪的是，微博上依然存在的最近唯一有关彭帅的帖子来自法国驻华大使馆。该贴呼吁中国政府履行其打击针对女性暴力的承诺。但该帖下面似乎经过精心挑选的评论却指责法国干涉中国内政。一些中国记者也采取同样的路线，到西方社交媒体网站上去质疑那些对彭帅状况表示担心者的动机。

“Can any girl fake such sunny smile under pressure? Those who suspect Peng Shuai is under duress, how dark they must be inside,” Hu Xijin, the editor of the nationalist Global Times tabloid, wrote on Twitter.

“什么女孩能在压力下装出这么灿烂的笑容？那些怀疑彭帅受胁迫的人，他们的内心一定很黑暗，”民族主义小报《环球时报》总编辑胡锡进在Twitter上用英文写道。

The narrative that Ms. Peng is being used by hostile foreign forces to undermine China has been echoed by other state media employees on Twitter. The posts have done little to appease concerns outside China.

彭帅被外国敌对势力利用来破坏中国的说法，在Twitter上得到了其他官媒员工的呼应。这些帖子对平息中国以外的担忧并没起到多大作用。

“There’s no narrative even to really distract; there’s nothing substantive beyond character attacks on the West and Western media,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, a research program in Hong Kong. He added, “This is really the best they’ve been able to come up with.”

“没有一点能真正分散注意力的叙事；除了诽谤西方和西方媒体外，没有任何实质性的东西，”香港的中国媒体项目主任班志远(David Bandurski)说。他还说，“这真的是他们能想出来的最好办法了。”

Within China, it remains unclear how many people are aware of the controversy. On Baidu, a Chinese search engine, queries for “Peng Shuai” spiked to nearly two million on Nov. 3, the day after she posted her accusation, but have since fallen to the tens of thousands. Ms. Peng’s frozen Weibo account, which does not appear in search results for her name, has gained 59,000 followers since her post — a blip in a country where top celebrities have tens of millions of followers.

尚不清楚中国国内有多少人知道这场争议。中国搜索引擎百度上检索“彭帅”的次数曾在11月3日飙升至近200万次，那是她做出指控的第二天，但那以后已下降到数万次。不再更新的彭帅微博帐号也未出现在检索她名字的结果中，但在她发了指控帖子后增添了59万个粉丝，在这个大名人的帐号常常有数千万关注者的国家只能算微不足道。

Mr. Xiao, the research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, is the founder of China Digital Times, a website that monitors Chinese internet controls. His group has tracked hundreds of keywords, some with only the faintest connection to Ms. Peng, that had been blocked from posts and searches. Only the most sensitive topics — like Xi Jinping, China’s leader; and the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 — have such long lists of blocked terms, he said.

在加州大学伯克利分校从事研究的科学家萧强是《中国数字时代》的创始人，该网站跟踪中国对互联网的控制。他的团队已收集了数百个禁止在帖子和检索中出现的相关关键词，其中一些与彭帅的关联非常微弱。萧强表示，以前只有中国领导人习近平、1989年的天安门广场镇压等最敏感的话题，才会有这么多的相关屏蔽词。

In the weeks since, censors have begun to fine-tune their approach. Some broad keywords, like “tennis,” have been restored in searches. Still, Mr. Xiao said, the wide gulf between what can be said outside China and what can be said inside the country could continue to plague attempts to control the topic.

在那之后的几周里，审查员们已开始对他们的工作做细小调整。一些宽泛的关键词，比如“网球”，已在检索中恢复。尽管如此，萧强说，境内外在话题尺度上的巨大鸿沟，可能会继续困扰试图控制这个话题的努力。

“They know they cannot feel secure. The Great Firewall leaks,” he said, using a term that refers to China’s blocks and filters that keep out foreign social media. “Millions of people jump the wall to read about it.”

“他们知道自己无法有安全感。防火长城有漏洞，几百万人翻墙上国外网站看东西，”萧强说，他说的“防火长城”指的是中国屏蔽外国社交媒体，将其拒之于国门之外的工具。