Much Ado about Gu

Gold medalist skier Eileen Gu is causing waves and raising questions for being an American who was raised and trains in America, but competes for China.

It’s America’s fault that Eileen Gu didn’t win. After eating it on the track in front of the whole wide world during the freeski slopestyle final, the Chinese Olympian complained that she was “carrying the weight of two countries.”

Two countries, really? Gu has to be a Chinese national to compete for China in the Olympics; and that should be impossible as China doesn’t allow dual citizenship. Not surprisingly, the San Francisco-born athlete skirts media questions about her American citizenship, but unless her homeland carved an exception for her, she would have been required to renounce it.

Gu was raised in the Bay Area by her mother and grandmother, attended an elite private school, and graduated from Stanford where she participated in a college sorority. She trains in the U.S. and lives here. Hers would be an all-American success story, save for a little quirk—Gu’s mother and grandmother are ChiComs.

After these individuals are identified by Chinese recruiters, they are encouraged to compete for their native country—and are used as propaganda. The 2022 Olympics gold medalist Eileen Gu, who looks strangely white, like her American father, raked up all sorts of endorsements in China. She’s making a bank off the idea of not identifying with the land of her birth.

This raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions about birthright citizenship. It doesn’t hurt to ask how Gu’s mother and grandmother, being family members of a high-ranking official in a Communist country, obtained access to residency in America. And how many other rich and powerful individuals from hostile nations have followed the same trajectory.

Ultimately, Gu’s allegiances are not very important—she’s just a jock. However, she is an example of the developing world elites establishing a foothold on our soil and a conspicuous element of Chinese expansion into the world in general, and into the U.S. specifically.

The extent of this expansion goes largely unnoticed, even if every University of California campus has a very visible and large Chinese national contingent. Many of these students will go on to become industrial spies. Gu’s own Stanford is no different.

More troubling still is the fact that our number one geopolitical rival has established police precincts in North America. Presumably, their key objective is to curb the dissident moods among the ethnic Chinese.

The relationship of our own political establishment to the world’s largest communist nation deserves scrutiny. For instance, in his capacity as a California governor, the leading Democrat presidential contender Gavin Newsom signed off on the questionable “Bay to Bay” program. The Washington, D.C.-based Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation criticized Newsom for entering into this contract that was structured similarly to the plunderous Chinese“Belts and Roads” Initiative.

Not unlike the rest of the San Francisco machine, the former mayor has extensive dealings with China. Most notoriously, he gave the country that spawned the 2020 global pandemic a billion dollars’ worth of contracts for medical equipment related to COVID measures mandated by the State of California (such as N95 masks).

The thinking of the local Asian American leadership is equally mysterious to me. Specifically, Eileen Gu has been recently named grand marshal of the 2026 San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade planned for March 6.

But why is an American-born woman who presumably renounced her U.S. citizenship picked to lead an iconic event that is held on our soil? Despite being born here, she is not one of us; she doesn’t think like us. If she performs short of expectations, an American athlete says: “Bummer! I will work harder next time” and congratulate the other opponents. Anything else is considered bad sportsmanship, and blaming the country of your birth is beyond that—it’s totally alien to what it means to be an American.

It’s disappointing that the unsung Asian American hero of the Milan Olympics, the gold medaling figure skater and Bay Area native Alysa Liu, didn’t get to lead the Lunar New Year parade this year. The leader of the Tiananmen Square protest and former political prisoner Wu Jianmin explained her circumstances:

“American media reports that Alysa Liu (刘美贤), who won the 2026 Winter Olympics team figure skating gold medal in Milan yesterday, was once, like Gu Ailing, listed by Beijing as a naturalization recruitment talent. China provided her with tens of millions in annual training funding, and she could have received advertising deals worth hundreds of millions of RMB.

Faced with the temptation, Alysa Liu’s father—my comrade-in-arms from the 1989 movement and a leader of the June Fourth Guangzhou student movement, Liu Junguo—firmly rejected it.”

Alyssa Liu

So let Eileen Gu be a warning about Gavin Newsom. On the other hand, figure skating Olympic gold-medalist Alysa Liu, a talented high achieving daughter of a freedom-loving family, however, is somebody that all Americans can celebrate.

Photo Credits- tntsport.co. uk, the wings. es, Daily Mail and simp. com.