From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernici. This is the Daily.

China's decision to censor a star athlete has confronted the sports industry with a dilemma.

Speak out on her behalf or protect their financial interests in China.

Today, I spoke to my colleague Matt Futterman about the unexpected way that dilemma is playing out.

It's Friday, December 10th.

Matt, I keep seeing headlines involving China and a woman tennis player, and I'm not quite sure what to make of them.

And as a long time sports writer for the times, who's covering this story, help me understand it.

Tell me where does it start?

So this story starts on November 2nd when Feng Shui, who has long been one of China's most popular tennis players certainly,

and probably even one of its most popular athletes, a three-time Olympian, Grand Slam doubles champion,

she goes on one of China's largest social media sites, Weibo, and she posts a lengthy blog post, I guess you would call it,

detailing her relationship with culminated in a sexual assault, and she states in this post,

even if it's just me, like an egg hitting a rock or a moth through a flame, courting self-destruction, I'll tell the truth about you.

And you happens to be a gentleman named Zhang Goli, who was one of the members of China's seven member ruling committee, along with Cheering Ping,

and this is the sort of accusation that does not get made against powerful people in China.

Wow, so here's this woman tennis player who's taking on a really prominent and powerful Chinese leader,

and just listening to her words and the image it makes, crack like an egg hitting a rock.

I mean, it's like she knows, and she's saying she knows, this is an incredibly risky move.

Yeah, she says that, and she says a lot of other things that are really disturbing. She talks about not feeling like she's worth living essentially,

but also not having the courage to die, talking about sort of her mind being worthless at this point, a state of confusion,

it's a real sort of cry for help in a lot of ways, and it's just incredibly upsetting and disturbing for people to read,

and I'm sure very disturbing for her to reveal. And it takes off sort of immediately.

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