Eighteen-year-old freeski champion Eileen Gu gave China its first women’s gold medal of the 2022 Winter Olympics on Tuesday, becoming the breakout star of the least-watched Games in TV history. Chinese state media is eager to use Gu for propaganda while protecting her image as a globalist megastar, while American media is reluctant to ask tough questions about why a California teen would put her incredible talent at the service of a genocidal slave-taking dictatorship.

{snip}

{snip} U.S. mainstream media has largely embraced the narrative of Gu as a brave iconoclast walking a tightrope between feuding superpowers, fending off unreasonable criticism from a few cloddish and possibly racist American nationalists — as though she had left California to play for Canada, rather than for a hostile authoritarian superpower with a penchant for ethnic cleansing.

Gu could easily have taken a spot on the U.S. Olympic team — she was racking up one trophy after another as an American competitor before she began entering events under the Chinese flag in 2019. {snip}

{snip}

Gu was born in San Francisco, California, in 2003. Her mother is a Chinese immigrant named Gu Yan, the daughter of a Chinese government official who moved to the United States about 30 years ago, worked as a ski instructor in the Lake Tahoe area, and raised Eileen as a single mom.

Eileen reportedly still lives with her mother and grandmother in San Francisco, but there is little on the record about her American father, aside from occasional mentions in Chinese state media that describe him as a graduate of Harvard.

{snip}

In addition to displaying phenomenal skiing talent at a young age, Eileen Gu has been highly successful as a fashion model, with a portfolio that includes ads for Gucci and Louis Vuitton. She has become one of the biggest celebrities in China, with tremendous exposure through both her modeling career and fawning state media coverage.

In January 2019, Gu competed in the World Cup finals in Italy as the youngest member of the U.S. freeski team. Three years younger and three inches shorter than she is today, she pulled off a stunning upset and vaulted from fourth place to first with an amazing performance on a course that had tripped her up several times. The vivacious young athlete accepted a gold medal, joyously belted out the Star-Spangled Banner — and then climbed aboard a plane to China for a hush-hush meeting with dictator Xi Jinping.

A week later, Gu was wearing Chinese Communist colors and listening to an indoctrination speech from Xi as part of China’s 2022 Olympic team. The dictator told Gu and her new teammates that winning Olympic gold was crucial to “the nation’s great rejuvenation.” Gu then posed with Xi and the rest of her team beneath the Communist flag.

It was not until June 2019 that Gu publicly announced her decision to forsake the country of her birth and play for the genocidal regime in Beijing. She did it on Weibo, the heavily-policed microblogging platform Chinese subjects are required to use because the social media platforms employed by the rest of the world are restricted to Communist Party officials and propagandists.

Gu declared herself “proud” to represent the regime, expressed hope that extreme sports could become “a means through which people in China and the United States can enhance their communication, understanding and friendship” — and then wrote a follow-up post in which she portrayed herself as a soldier reporting for duty.

Despite these nauseating displays, Gu today insists she is a non-political citizen-of-the-world whose goal is to bring China and the U.S. together with her love of sports.

“I am proud of my heritage, and equally proud of my American upbringings,” she said in the June 2019 Instagram post in which she informed American fans of her decision to play for China in the Olympics.

{snip}

It is difficult to believe Gu could possibly be ignorant of China’s atrocities. Her coaches invariably describe her as well-read and highly intelligent. In the United States, she describes herself as an “outspoken” advocate for social justice causes, including gender issues, anti-Asian violence, and Black Lives Matter.

“I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, I was with my grandma in a Walgreens in San Francisco and this haphazard, haggard man runs in screaming profanities about Asian people and how they were bringing the virus in and how it was super dangerous. I don’t think I’ve ever felt fear like that in my entire life,” Gu told the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in March 2021.

“I have always been really outspoken in all matters, not just race but gender too. I’m very comfortable with these topics because they are very important. During the Black Lives Matter movement, I wanted to do my part as an ally. Obviously I’m never going to fully understand the kind of oppression that [African-Americans] go through. But it’s so important to stand by, support and amplify those voices that are so often silenced,” she said.

{snip}

Gu fits comfortably into a distressingly long list of star American athletes who speak out on social issues in the United States, but fall absolutely silent when the conversation turns to China, which is practicing actual slavery right now. The regime in Beijing has demonstrated its willingness to crush the Chinese business interests of foreigners who displease it.

{snip{

Gu dodged the citizenship question three times in a row on Tuesday, repeatedly stating her gratitude to both America and China for her athletic career and insisting she is just a “kid” with a “good heart,” no matter what flag she competes under. The press conference moderator intervened to prevent reporters from asking the question a fourth time.

Chinese state media claims Gu became a naturalized subject of the Chinese Communist government three years ago, a transition that would have required renouncing her American citizenship, since China does not recognize dual citizenships.

Canada’s Globe and Mailobserved over the weekend that China’s team includes some foreign players who apparently were not required to become Chinese citizens.

{snip}