The mystery of Eileen Gu

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Anyone confused how/why American born, trained and sponsored Eileen Gu is competing for China in the winter Olympics?

How does an American citizen who's father is American, who does not actually qualify to compete for China (China has laws that only Chinese citizens can compete in the Olympics) able to represent the PRC??

She seems awfully happy to win a gold medal for China and talks about her "pride" in her heritage but then she's accepted a sports scholarship to Stanford University?

I don't quite get how she got away with this?

I don't know the particulars of how the rules work, but I really don't like it. I'm by no means a nationalist and don't put much stock in sports, but this actually offends me on some level, I kinda wish she'd had to renounce her citizenship or something drastic in order to do it.

Was watching a podcast about this. Her American (non-Chinese) father received a ship load of money to work on some high level artificial intelligence research. I think she's representing China because she was given more money than she could ever earn in America as a freestyle skier.

The problem is the Olympics is not a professional sport like the NBA. It's highly unethical how this was conducted and my opinion is Eileen Gu has done the dirty on her American supporters who probably invested $$ and time into making her a champion. If she has had to renounce her citizenship for China then why is Stanford offering her a sports scholarship? she seems like a slippery opportunist.

Seems when it's the other way around the Chinese public call these Olympians traitors.

22-year-old Chinese-American Nathan Chen was labelled a “traitor” on the social media platform Weibo for choosing to represent the United States, and was even told to “get out of China”. After Thursday’s victory, some on Weibo complained that Chen was “too white” and Americanised, citing a long list of examples where they thought Chen was “insulting China” with his actions.

The Yale student put his support behind American ice dancer Evan Bates’ condemnation of China’s human rights abuses in an October interview. At the time, Bates came down hard on China’s “awful” treatment of the Uyghur people. The US did not send any diplomats to the Winter Olympics in Beijing because of the “egregious human rights abuses and atrocities”.

According to Reuters, Bates said during a US Olympic and Paralympic Committee event: “We’re human beings, too, and when we read and hear about the things that are happening there, we absolutely hate that. We hate what’s going on there.

Isn't this not uncommon? IIRC in the past Canada and the US have benefited from sprinters from Caribbean nations participating under their flag and if I'm not mistaken in addition to Ms. Gu the PRC also has people with similar citizenship status participating as part of their men's hockey team.

I feel like the idea of the Olympics as an amateur competition hasn't been true in decades and that there really isn't a real fiasco, it's just that in this case the talent was drawn away from a western nation instead of towards it.

It isn't quite the same thing though. The US has invested quite heavily in developing Eileen Gu as an Olympian. She is benefitting financially from some arrangement with her American father (who has been recruited to access his expertise on AI research).

My recollection in the old days had this been the Soviet Union then the actions of her father and his daughter would have been interpreted as being traitors by the US government.

It would, however, seem that Eileen Gu has forgetten to stop posting on instagram
https://au.sports.yahoo.com/winter-olym ... 56168.html

It would seem princess Gu is trying to get the best of both worlds.

The criticism that she's receiving special privilege compared to Chinese citizens is perfectly fair and agreeable and it's telling that it seems to come from both within China and from outside.

Criticisms relating to where she might owe allegiance to not so much. Poaching athletes isn't a new thing and I don't really blame athletes for pursuing whatever they feel will best enable them compete to the best they possibly can. I can appreciate when people will avoid leveraging something that might gain them an allowable advantage but I don't begrudge competitors for leveraging everything that they believe might possibly gain them an allowable advantage.

At the very least I wonder to what extent people's concern in this case is magnified by anti-China sentiments. If she is allowed by the rules to compete under that flag and wishes to compete under that flag she's entitled to, just like athletes that other countries pour money into who later switch to competing under another flag they're allowed to are entitled to. If there's a problem in regards to athletes not being bound tightly enough to certain national teams that's a problem at the organizational level, not any individual athlete's fault.

I keep reading the thread title as "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."

In principle these make perfect sense. I am sure there are plenty of American sports stars who have chosen to play in foreign countries on contract but these are professional sportsplayers and are open to sign contracts with anyone willing to pay. We have had American basketballers in the past choosing to settle in Australia although I don't know if they were allowed to represent Australia?

Olympians are not professional sportsmen and there is a difference in choosing to represent your country. I understand that there are athletes who have moved from Africa or the Caribbean to the EU or USA to represent their new countries. However they are driven by both poverty and opportunity to improve their standard of living.

What makes Eileen Gu's decision to jump ship from the US to represent China in the Olympics is both the timing and convenience. Her comments that she wants to represent "her heritage" is a lie since she quite clearly dyes her hair blonde posts pictures on instagram, quite clearly still has American friends. Her father was offered a fistful of $$ to work for the Chinese regime developing AI for the Chinese military. Eileen played along and was offered $$ to represent China.

I feel they are both motivated by greed and perhaps lack ethics to support a regime that commits human rights violations against it's own population. This reminds me of sports people who were paid $$ to work in South Africa during the apartheid era.

I don't think it's either of our place to decide whether having dyed blonde hair or American friends are inherently at odds with her wanting to embrace her heritage. One can embrace their ethnic heritage without being a backwards traditionalist.

Maybe it's greed, but if it is you're not well positioned to call it out with any credibility because you can't possibly lecture her on what defines her heritage to her or any else who shares that heritage because it's not yours.

She can call/claim what she wants. But I don't buy her reasons.

The other thing is the Chinese government bent their own rules to accommodate this girl. Olympians must be citizens of the nations in which they compete, and China’s policy is not to allow dual citizenship. Yet Gu hasn’t made clear whether she has relinquished her US passport. She has a sports scholarship to attend Stanford University. She still lives with her mother and grandmother in San Francisco. She is a California native who competed as an American before switching national affiliations in 2019. Yet Chinese journalists are calling her "our Beijing girl" as if she's a native of China??

Somethings smells off.

Mine definitely is, though I wouldn't call it concern, more like judgement. The CCP is the closest thing we have to an actual evil fascist regime, it's actively committing atrocities as we speak, and it bugs me that US born athletes would agree to represent them for money or any other reason. This is an extension of my ongoing displeasure with our sports and entertainment industries kowtowing to China in hopes of being allowed to profit off of its huge market, it definitely tests the limits of my belief that free markets are generally a good thing.

Princess Gu has been rather cagey with journalists asking pointy questions about her citizenship or about CCP politics. My guess is her father and she have thrown their lot with the CCP for enough money for them to retire in China (perhaps Hong Kong) so that they never have to answer a western journalist later on as to why they would knowingly support a regime that is a human rights violator and hell bent on military expansion not unlike the axis powers back in the 1940s.

Did you forget about the kids in cages? They didn't cease to exist when Trump left office. She was already representing a known human rights violator with a long track record of those actions in service of what can fairly be described as an imperialist agenda and deadset on world domination.

China can't portray itself as a good actor, but they can easily portray the US as similarly bad if they play the right whataboutist cards.

That's probably at least part of how they charm people like her.

I don't think Miss Gu is that deep a thinker. She knows about China from the news but clearly $$ means she didn't care. At the end of the day she's a sportsperson so I don't take her comments that seriously anyway. However, she and daddy are helping to bolster the image of the CCP in the global eye so she's unwittingly helping the propaganda war for the CCP.

China really doesn't care about the poor and downtrodden in the US (a simple search of confucian principles outlines their cultural manifesto). Judging by the behaviour of east Asians in the US those who migrate to the US are quick to position themselves adjacent to those in power so that argument is redundant.