Alysa Liu speaks out on Eileen Gu’s decision to compete for China over US and political backlash

U.S. Olympic figure skating sensation weighed in on the controversy surrounding American-born Team China skier Eileen Gu for choosing to represent China instead of the U.S. 

Liu gave her thoughts and background with Gu during an interview with The New York Times. 

“I’ve known Eileen since I was 13 or something. We’re from the Bay Area. She’s super nice, and her mom is from China. I think people are hypocritical for shaming her for representing China. So, in my head, it’s a bit hypocritical, because her mom is an immigrant. Y’all would have told her to go back to China. Now that they’re back in China, you’re mad,” Liu said. 

“And it’s sport, it doesn’t matter what country we represent. Sport is sport, and she has a love for competition, she has love for the game. I think that’s all that matters. There’s no shame in going to where opportunity is.”

Gu was a target for global criticism during the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, as she won two silvers and one gold in freeskiing. 

Vice President JD Vance even weighed in on Gu’s decision during an interview on Fox News when the Olympics was going on. 

“I have no idea what her status should be, I think that’s ultimately up to the Olympics Committee, I won’t pretend to wade into that,” Vance said.

“I certainly think that someone who grew up in the United States of America who benefited from our education system, from the freedoms and liberties that makes this country a great place, I would hope they want to compete with the United States of America. So, I’m going to root for American athletes, I think part of that is people who identify themselves as Americans. That’s who I’m rooting for in this Olympics.”

Gu later responded to Vance’s comment and went on to agree that she feels like a “punching bag for a certain strand of American politics.”

“I’m flattered. Thanks, JD! That’s sweet,” Gu said of Vance’s comments, per USA Today.

“So many athletes compete for a different country…. People only have a problem with me doing it because they kind of lump China into this monolithic entity, and they just hate China. So it’s not really about what they think it’s about. And also, because I win. Like if I wasn’t doing well, I think that they probably wouldn’t care as much, and that’s OK for me. People are entitled to their opinions.”

Throughout the Olympics, and especially after Liu made history as the first American to win Olympic gold in a women’s individual figure skating competition since 2002 and the first American woman to medal at all in the event since 2006, the two athletes were relentlessly compared on social media for their similar backgrounds as American children of Chinese immigrants.

Liu’s father, Arthur Liu, fled China after participating in the Tiananmen Square protests in the summer of 1989, coming to America and having Alysa through a surrogate and anonymous egg donor.

Meanwhile, Gu’s mother, Yan Gu, was a student at Peking University studying chemistry and biochemistry, according to The New York Times. She came to the United States to earn a master’s degree, eventually earning it from Stanford. 

At age 40, Yan gave birth to Eileen, and raised her as a single parent, according to Olympics.com. Not much is known about Gu’s father. Eileen has not publicly commented on him and declined to answer questions about him with The New York Times.

Then around 2018–2022, China accelerated a program aimed at recruiting foreign-born athletes, primarily with Chinese heritage, to boost competitiveness, notably for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and soccer, according to The China Project.

Gu and Liu were top recruiting targets.

Gu traded in her red, white and blue for red and gold. Just months after competing in her first Freestyle Ski World Cup for the U.S. in January 2019, she competed for China for the first time in June of that year after requesting a change of nation with the International Ski Federation.

In an announcement on Instagram, she said she made the decision “to help inspire millions of young people” in China and “to unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations.”

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The Lius remained loyal to Team USA. 

Arthur was reportedly “not open to persuasion” to having Alysa compete for China, according to The Economist.

In an interview with Time Magazine, Gu was asked her thoughts on China’s alleged persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

“I haven’t done the research. I don’t think it’s my business. I’m not going to make big claims on my social media,” Gu answered. 

“I’m just more of a skeptic when it comes to data in general.… So it’s not like I can read an article and be like, ‘Oh, well, this must be the truth.’ I need to have a ton of evidence. I need to maybe go to the place, maybe talk to 10 primary source people who are in a location and have experienced life there. 

“Then I need to go see images. I need to listen to recordings. I need to think about how history affects it. Then I need to read books on how politics affects it. This is a lifelong search. It’s irresponsible to ask me to be the mouthpiece for any agenda.”

Liu and her family, on the other hand, found themselves in the crosshairs of China’s government ahead of the 2022 Beijing Games amid her father’s past and her own refusal to compete for China.

Before her appearance in the 2022 Beijing games, she and her father were the alleged targets of a spying operation by the Chinese government.

Liu called the experience “a little bit freaky and exciting.”

“You know what I mean? It’s so… unbelievable. You know what I mean like, that’s crazy,” Liu previously told Fox News Digital at a roundtable interview at the USOPC Media Summit in October.

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“Like, imagine finding that out at such a young age, I mean, like In a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like in some prank show?’ Like, is this world real. Like, I must be some movie character. But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, from like everything my dad did back in his activist days.”

Since winning gold, Liu has surpassed Gu in social media followers. However, Liu has also pulled out of the upcoming World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czech Republic. 

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