Bay Area Olympic Stars Liu and Gu Spark Nationalism Debate Between US and China

Two Bay Area-raised Olympic champions have become symbols in the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, drawing vastly different reactions from both nations based on their choice of which country to represent.

Alysa Liu, a 20-year-old born in Clovis and raised in the East Bay, made history in Milan by becoming the first American in 24 years to win gold in women’s figure skating, according to recent Olympic results. She also captured a second gold in the team event while competing for Team USA.

Meanwhile, San Francisco native Eileen Gu, 22, won one gold and two silvers in freestyle skiing after obtaining a Chinese passport in 2019 and choosing to represent China instead of her birth country.

The contrasting reception of the two athletes reveals the deepening political tensions between the superpowers. In the United States, many people celebrated Liu’s performance as a victory for liberty, while critics including former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom and various conservative media figures have called Gu a traitor, according to social media commentary. Several politicians have accused her of supporting America’s adversary.

On Chinese social media platform Weibo, the treatment was largely reversed. A user based in Guangdong commented, “Eileen Gu is a hero of China while Alysa Liu is a descendant of an anti-China figure,” according to the platform.

The athletes’ family backgrounds add complexity to the debate. Liu’s father, Arthur Liu, was a student activist who ended up on the Chinese government’s most wanted list after the Tiananmen crackdown, according to family history. He fled to the United States in 1989, became a lawyer, and raised five children as a single parent.

Gu’s decision to compete for China made her a geopolitical asset for Beijing, according to observers of the recruitment effort. A Beijing city government document published last year showed that the municipal sports bureau planned to pay Gu and one other American-born athlete competing for China a combined $14 million over three years, according to the official record. Their names were later scrubbed from the document after it drew public criticism.

The controversy reflects China’s broader ethnonationalist philosophy under President Xi Jinping, who took full power in 2013. The Chinese Communist Party has long advanced the idea that people of Chinese descent, wherever they reside and whatever passport they hold, remain part of the Chinese nation, according to political analysts.

This recruitment strategy extends beyond individual athletes. Of the 48 players on China’s men’s and women’s Olympic hockey teams in 2022, 22 were naturalized athletes with Chinese lineage, according to team rosters.

Both athletes will receive local honors in the coming days. Gu will serve as grand marshal of San Francisco’s Chinese New Year parade tonight, while Liu will be celebrated Thursday at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, according to city announcements.

The debate surrounding Liu and Gu exposes deeper questions about heritage, loyalty and identity that extend far beyond sports. As the United States and China compete for global leadership, nationalism on both sides has intensified, turning athletic achievements into proxy battles for rival political systems.

The uncomfortable comparisons being drawn between the two Bay Area champions highlight how individual athletes can become unwilling symbols in a broader geopolitical struggle, their personal choices scrutinized through the lens of national loyalty rather than athletic achievement.