Gu Ailing, a Chinese-American half-blood born in San Francisco, USA, was a dazzling sports star before participating in the Beijing Winter Olympics. She has won eight international ski events, including a gold medal in the big jumping event at the Lausanne Winter Youth Olympics in 2020, and three medals at the Winter Xtreme Games in Aspen, Colorado, USA last year. Before she announced she was the first naturalized skier in China at the age of 16, she had already topped the FIS annual points list and won more than 50 championships, including 9 national championships.
On February 8, 2022, after she represented the Chinese team and won the gold medal in the women’s freestyle ski jumping event at the Winter Olympics; the issue of her nationality caused a lot of controversy. Some people even questioned that Gu Ailing did not give up his American nationality, and that he competed with Chinese nationality, which is not in line with Chinese law or Olympic regulations. And she herself has never been clear about her nationality. When Gu Ailing answered questions from the media about her nationality concerns at the press conference, she only replied with “When I am in the United States, I am American; when I am in China, I am Chinese.”
Due to Gu Ailing’s popularity after winning the gold medal, and the one-sided public opinion trend of the media and small pink people who spare no effort to tout her “winning glory for the country”, the authorities have a tendency to ride a tiger. A Weibo post began to guide the direction of public opinion, saying, “Public opinion’s propaganda for her (Gu Ailing) should be moderate, and it should be limited to the scope of sports success and the spirit of the Olympics. It is more appropriate to replace it with ‘win glory for the Chinese team’.”
And because Gu Ailing has been admitted to the famous Stanford University in the United States, Hu Xijin also emphasized, “Gu Ailing has just turned 18 years old, at least in the next few years, her living base will most likely be in the United States, how will she determine her nationality in the future? There is uncertainty about how to show national identity in her character design. Chinese public opinion should reserve a vague area for her propaganda to prevent her from being passive in the future.”
According to Article 41 of the Olympic Charter, Gu Ailing must be a Chinese citizen in order to represent China in the competition, but according to Article 8 of the Chinese Nationality Law, those who have been approved to become Chinese nationals “shall not retain foreign nationality.”
So far, the U.S. side has not made any comment on whether Gu Ailing has dual citizenship, because U.S. authorities usually regard the renunciation of citizenship as personal privacy.
However, according to a report by the Voice of America (VOA), they recently discovered that on the official website of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, an English profile about Gu Ailing had been deleted. The original text originally wrote, “In 2019, after she (Gu Ailing) won the World Cup for the first time in Italy, in order to represent China in the 2022 Beijing East Olympics, she gave up her American citizenship and became a Chinese citizen.”, But the text was changed on February 10 to read, “In 2019, after winning the World Cup for the first time in Italy, she decided to represent China.”
“Voice of America” also found that an article on the official website of the International Olympic Games entitled “5 Things You Don’t Know About Gu Ailing” mentioned that Gu Ailing has “dual nationality”; but on February 10 On the same day, this part of the content was deleted.
“Voice of America” stated that they asked the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, the International Olympic Games and other units through emails to inquire about Gu Ailing’s profile and the reason for the “change” of the content of the article, but did not receive a reply.
Donald Clarke, a professor of law at the George Washington University School of Law who specializes in Chinese law, reasoned that if Gu Ailing did not renounce U.S. citizenship, it was likely that Beijing had loosened the rules to allow foreign-born “naturalization” to compete on behalf of China. Athletes, retain dual nationality, thereby increasing the number of Olympic medals that symbolize national strength.
Susan Brownell, a professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, who has been a guest at Beijing Sports University and has been engaged in Olympic-related research, analyzed that if the authorities relax the relevant regulations on dual citizenship, but avoid public recognition, it will only be to avoid public grievances. . Because “there are thousands of people in China who want to have dual citizenship. If you give an athlete dual citizenship, other people will immediately ask, ‘What about me?’ That’s why China has to keep silent.”
According to CNN, at least 10 athletes representing China at the Winter Olympics were born and raised in other countries. The report also said ironically, “At this year’s Beijing Winter Olympics, the face of China’s sports dream is, without a doubt, an American.”