What is the FIS new program to stir up interest in Skiing in China called?
Eileen Gu is the poster kid for a new type of Chinese athlete. Only one wrong move could send her tumbling
Updated 1051 GMT (1851 HKT) February 8, 2022
Hong Kong (CNN)At this yr's Beijing Winter Olympics, the confront of China's sporting dreams is undeniably American.
Freestyle skier Eileen Gu's rise to the top has been meteoric -- and her popularity in Communist china has exploded in the atomic number 82-upwardly to the Games. "Snow princess Gu Ailing set to smoothen at domicile Olympics," read one headline in state-run media Xinhua, referring to Gu by her Chinese name.
But Gu, 18, has another home: the United states, where she was born to a Chinese female parent and American father, and where she first discovered her dear for the sport. In 2015, just a few months subsequently she reached her first World Cup podium, the San Francisco native appear she was switching to compete for Cathay instead of the US -- a controversial decision that thrust her firmly into the spotlight.
"This was an incredibly tough decision for me to make," she wrote in an Instagram postal service at the time. "I am proud of my heritage, and every bit proud of my American upbringings."
She has since become a household name in China. Walk down the street and y'all'll see her face splashed across billboards and magazine covers. Promotional videos ahead of the Olympics bear witness Gu performing tricks midair and running on the Cracking Wall. She has well-nigh 2 million followers on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, as well as multiple Chinese sponsors, make deals, and documentary teams post-obit her every motility.
But behind her success is the heavy pressure level of being both Chinese and American at a fourth dimension of intense geopolitical tensions; of representing her female parent's homeland, a country under fire in the W for declared human being rights abuses; and of trying to be an athlete and nothing more during i of the most controversial Olympics in recent history.
She'due south not the only one walking this tightrope -- the Beijing Olympics feature an unprecedented number of strange-born athletes competing for China, many hailing from N America. Among them, Gu has get a affiche kid for an ambitious China, eager to show information technology has the power to attract strange talent and mold a new blazon of Chinese athlete on the earth stage.
But these athletes -- especially those of Chinese descent -- face an impossible balancing act as they straddle ii countries and navigate the complexities of a dual identity in the public center.
An impossible position
More than a dozen athletes representing Red china at the Olympics are foreign-born -- and most are on the men's hockey team, where just 6 of the 25 members are homegrown nationals.
Switching citizenship for sport is actually quite common internationally -- China is just tardily to the game, said Susan Brownell, an skillful on Chinese sports at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The shift is especially unusual given that Communist china is highly homogenous with some of the world'southward strictest immigration rules. "China never did things similar this before," Brownell added.
There are plenty of Caucasian faces in the mix with no Chinese ethnicity or obvious link to the country, such as former NHL players Jake Chelios and Jeremy Smith. But it's the athletes of Chinese descent who are under the most scrutiny, such every bit Canadian-built-in hockey thespian Brandon Yip and United states of america-born ice skater Zhu Yi, formerly known as Beverly Zhu.
Zhu'south disappointing Olympic debut served to illustrate the unique pressures facing these athletes. After she cruel flat on the water ice and finished last in the women'southward short program team upshot Sunday, Chinese social media exploded in contemptuousness and vitriol directed at the 19-year-sometime skater.
On Weibo, the hashtag "Zhu Yi has fallen" gained 200 million views in just a few hours. Many questioned why Zhu was picked for the team at the expense of a Chinese-born athlete, while others criticized her halting Mandarin. "This is such a disgrace," said a comment with 11,000 upvotes.
Gu and Zhu are mirror images in many means -- both born in California, simply a twelvemonth autonomously in age -- but Gu has charmed the public with her fluent Mandarin and familiarity with Chinese civilization, and has received little of the Chinese skepticism that dogs Zhu.
Gu advanced to the Big Air finals at her outset qualifying contest on Monday, after being introduced by the announcer as a "favorite" and drawing a roar from the excited crowd. Just it's unclear whether that applause will go along if Gu doesn't evangelize the gold medals she's tipped to win.
And Gu's fame brings its own challenges. Fox News has labeled her the "ungrateful child of America," a sentiment found frequently nether her social media posts, as well as that of hockey players like Chelios.
"Nice to see you take all your U.s. successes and accomplishments to People's republic of china and non stand for where you were born and raised," a commenter wrote under 1 of Gu's Instagram posts last week.
Some have accused her of placing turn a profit and prestige higher up taking a stand on human rights issues, with critics taking detail aim at the loftier-profile sponsorships she has landed in China. The US is leading a diplomatic boycott of the Games, citing the declared human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in China'due south western Xinjiang region -- which Gu has stayed quiet on.
Through it all, Gu has tried to walk a center path. She creates social media content in both English language and Chinese, posts photos from Shanghai and California, cracks jokes for American audiences on TikTok while starring in Chinese-language documentaries in the mainland.
"When I'm in Cathay, I'm Chinese. When I'm in the US, I'm American," Gu told Olympic Channel at the Lausanne 2020 Youth Wintertime Olympics.
Simply last week, she alluded to this dual identity in a caption on Instagram. "Having been introduced to the sport growing up in the US, I wanted to encourage Chinese skiers the same way my American role models inspired me," she wrote.
But as much as she wants to express both parts of her heritage and stay away from politics, information technology seems the world won't allow her. And Cathay's encompass of Gu also reflects its uncompromising view of nationality, which has become more than insular and forceful under Chinese President Xi Jinping: either you're Chinese or y'all're not.
The citizenship contend
Hanging over Gu -- and many of the foreign-built-in athletes -- is the question of citizenship.
Cathay does not allow dual citizenship, with the government cracking down in recent years and encouraging the public to report people secretly belongings two passports. There are very few exceptions to the ban, and it's highly unlikely any of these exceptional circumstances utilise to the athletes in question, said Donald Clarke, a professor at the George Washington University Law School specializing in Chinese police force.
"The just way the hockey players could go Chinese citizens is to become naturalized, and under China'south nationality police force, they need to renounce their foreign citizenship," Clarke told CNN. The same goes for Gu.
Simply it's not clear whether that has been enforced. Gu has never publicly shared whether she renounced her Us citizenship to compete for People's republic of china, and speculation grew later on she applied for the US Presidential Scholars Program in 2021, which is merely open to United states citizens or permanent residents. The official Olympics site appeared to confirm her condition in a January commodity that referred to Gu'south "dual nationality."
Both Clarke and Brownell said the more likely scenario is that Communist china bent its ain rules to let foreign-born athletes to keep 2 passports, hoping to bolster its Olympic medal count -- long touted past the Chinese authorities as a sign of national strength.
This strategy might be "an experiment by the Chinese leadership, which will gauge the public reaction before deciding whether to movement forwards with the practice on a larger scale and assuasive dual citizenship to athletes," Brownell said.
Chinese officials have carefully avoided the question of Gu'due south nationality, instead emphasizing her Chinese heritage. She is what the regime oftentimes refers to as "overseas Chinese" -- foreign nationals of Chinese descent, given that characterization regardless of their citizenship or how many generations of their family unit have lived abroad.
Since Xi took office, he has repeatedly asserted that overseas Chinese, as well, vest to the nation -- and repeatedly pledged to "unite overseas Chinese" with their relatives in China as part of the "Chinese dream."
It seems that Gu is part of that Chinese dream, with the authorities and its propaganda machine going full steam in claiming her equally their own.
"I accept very very deep roots in China," Gu told state broadcaster CCTV, according to state-run nationalist tabloid Global Times. She added that she had been in China when it was announced the Winter Games would be held in Beijing, which is when "I started thinking about competing for Red china."
In one piece, Xinhua noted that Gu visited Beijing every summer growing upward, watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics from the stands, and loves Peking duck and dumplings.
Gu "should be an idol for the whole world," a Chinese fan told the Global Times. "Information technology used to be that people wanted to exist American, so why not accept that people want to be Chinese now?"
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/07/china/eileen-gu-olympics-foreign-athletes-mic-intl-hnk/index.html
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