Consider This from NPR - American-Born Athletes Competing For China Experience Extra Scrutiny

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Just under three dozen of China's athletes competing at the Olympics this year were born in other countries. Most famously, ski prodigy Eileen Gu, who has dozens of brand sponsorships and is praised on Chinese social media. That's in contrast to skater Zhu Yi, who has been called a "disgrace" after she fell during her short program. And the rhetoric appears on both sides. Some U.S. commentators have criticized Gu for her decision to compete for China.Jules Boykoff is a political science professor at Pacific University and studies the politics of sports. He explains how politics play out in the Olympics. Amy Qin is a China correspondent for the New York Times. Her article on the subject is "The Olympians Caught Up in the U.S.-China Rivalry."In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Millions of people have turned on their televisions to watch athletes from around the world compete in this year's Winter Olympics. And one of the names that have stood out is this one. Superstar skier Eileen Gu.

Eileen Gu has become... And the women's event was Eileen Gu. And it's impossible to be in China and not know Eileen Gu. Now, if that name is not familiar to you, we will let NPR's Tom Goldman explain who she is. She was born in San Francisco to a Chinese mother. She announced a few years ago she would stop competing as a freestyle skier for the U.S. and instead compete for China. Gu is sponsored by two dozen brands, from Estee Lauder to Oakley.

And she appears constantly in commercials on Chinese television. She's known affectionately in China as Frog Princess, with Chinese social media users praising her confidence and beauty. But the response to Gu hasn't been 100% positive. Like, for example, she's been criticized by Chinese social media users for the special treatment she seems to be getting. She's had to field multiple questions like this one. One thing we've been trying to clarify, are you still a U.S. citizen or how's that work?

I've always been super outspoken in my gratitude to the U.S. The Olympics are political through and through. Jules Boykoff is a professor of political science at Pacific University in Oregon, and he says it's not uncommon for Olympic athletes to switch countries. It's just not usually huge news. When it tends to generate attention is when somebody decides to compete for a country that is considered dangerous by the people of another country or problematic. And when it comes to this year, Boykoff points to rising geopolitical tensions

as a cause for all the fiery rhetoric on both sides. These Olympics in Beijing are arriving at an inflection point where the United States and China are very much in competition and the whole world knows it. Consider this. The International Olympic Committee often likes to say that the Olympics are not about politics. But the games have long been a stage for larger political fights. This year, as tensions between the U.S. and China continue to rise,

some athletes are receiving extra scrutiny from both sides. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Thursday, February 17th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. So who gets to compete for a country's national team at the Winter Olympics? That's a complicated question in China, where issues of identity, ethnicity, and citizenship are at stake. And a new generation of foreign-born athletes are pushing those boundaries. NPR's Emily Fang explains. This Winter Olympics, you might notice, just under three dozen of China's athletes were not born in China. Most of these foreign-born athletes are on China's men's ice hockey team, but most famously, they also include freestyle

ski prodigy Aileen Gu. I definitely feel as though I am just as American as I am Chinese. I'm American when I'm in the U.S. and I'm Chinese when I'm in China. San Francisco-born Gu made headlines when she announced in 2019 that she was skiing for China this Olympics. To be clear, switching teams is extremely common. Here's Tom Fabian, a researcher at the University of Ottawa. There's definitely a brawn drain going on, basically extracting athletic capital, you know, athletic talent from economically developing nations. And they'll bring them on board to their teams where they have the resources and then just give them citizenship.

China is a latecomer to this strategy, though, because it expressly forbids its citizens from holding multiple citizenships. So many people wondered, had Gu taken a Chinese passport and given up her American one? And also, why does China have such strict nationality laws? Turns out you've got to go back to the Qing dynasty, specifically to 1909. Just two years before the revolution that would finally overthrow it. That's Tom Mullaney, who teaches history at Stanford University. He explains the Qing were desperate to co-opt ethnically Chinese people living abroad and stop them from fomenting revolution.

So the Qing adopted what they called the bloodline principle, the idea that citizenship is based on Chinese heritage and not where you are born. It is really a 20th century phenomenon of Chinese regimes celebrating and reaching out to and seeking connection with so-called overseas Chinese communities. Xiao Dan, who teaches history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says Qing officials closely studied Japanese nationality law at the time. They emphasize what they assume as a kind of societal impact or consequence of the bloodline principle is unconditional, permanent loyalty.

Meaning controlling citizenship was also a way of ensuring allegiance to only China. But back to the more pressing question facing athletes today of which Olympic teams they can represent. It comes down to whether athletes profess a Chinese nationality, but not necessarily citizenship. Two separate concepts that are often conflated in Chinese law, says Mike Gao at Edge Hill University in England. Citizenship is a much more formal recognition that conveys certain rights on you, but also certain responsibilities that you have. Whereas nationality doesn't have that. Nationality is just, it's more tied up with your identity of who you are. Different sports federations have different

rules on this, but the International Olympic Committee only asks for athletes to prove nationality, their personal connection to a country. So foreign athletes born to Chinese parents abroad could declare Chinese nationality in order to play for China and keep their foreign passport. Or according to Chinese officials, they could get Chinese permanent residency, sort of like a green card started in 2020 to attract foreign talent. Gary Chodorow, a U.S. immigration lawyer who specializes in China, says it's a sign China's rigid views on who counts as Chinese may be relaxing just a tiny bit. Probably the most important factor for the Chinese government is being able to take advantage of the wealth and expertise of overseas Chinese.

So allowing them to come to China to share what they've got. Though that acceptance seems only to extend to those who are successful. Zhu Yi, a U.S.-born figure skater on China's team, fell during competition. That and her rusty Mandarin caused Chinese internet users to lambast her for taking a real Chinese person's spot. Emily Fang, NPR News, Beijing. Amy Chin is a China correspondent for The New York Times, and she says part of the vitriol towards Zhu Yi stems from the way medal counts are linked to national pride in China. Some people were sort of mocking her for the fact that her Chinese was pretty rusty.

And then when she fell, you know, a lot of people weighed in and were like, oh, you're a disgrace to China. Go back to America. And without evidence, they said, accused her of using her father's connections to get a spot on the team and that she took this place of this Chinese born skater. And because China is hosting the Olympics this year, there's more pressure on her to perform well. It's more than just you didn't perform well for our country. It's also we took you onto this team and you came from somewhere else. Then you still you didn't perform well. So it's sort of this kind of double whammy. Chin says athletes like Drewie and Aileen Gu have to walk a tightrope. Like many children of immigrants, they grow up straddling two cultures. Their decisions about who to represent at the Olympics

are personal and sometimes practical. But when you have this geopolitics happening now, which is this big rivalry between the U.S. and China, all these sort of personal decisions get overlaid with this broader geopolitical context. And suddenly what for you as an athlete might have felt like a personal decision gets read also as a political decision as well. And it's coming from all sides, Chin says. We see people criticizing Zhu Yi for coming and competing for Team China, but then not doing well. But then you also see some commentators in the U.S. criticizing Aileen Gu and questioning her loyalty. I think the only word we can arrive at is ungrateful.

That is Fox host Will Kane. He appeared on Tucker Carlson's show earlier this month. For her to betray, turn her back on the country that not just raised her, but turned her into a world-class skier with the training and facilities that only the United States of America can provide, for her to then turn her back a world-class skier with the training and facilities that only the United States of America can provide. For her to then turn her back on that in exchange for money is shameful. In a news conference shortly after her gold medal win for the free ski big air event, Aileen Gu expressed gratitude for both the U.S. and China. She said both teams inspired and

supported her. And so in that sense, I feel like sport is really a way that we can unite people. It's something that doesn't have to be related to nationality. It's not something that can be used to divide people. We're all out here together pushing the human limit. The thing is, political science professor Jules Boykoff says the Olympics are organized in such a way that emphasizes nationality. The International Olympic Committee has long chosen to have the athletes walk into the Olympics by country, thereby setting up the stage for political nationalism. But he doesn't necessarily think it's fair to criticize an athlete for their choice of nationality. It's hard enough already to be an athlete competing in the Olympics, let alone if you lacquer on a layer of COVID-19 on top,

and then you lacquer on another layer of questions about your nationality, which in turn allow people to question your integrity. And Amy Chin thinks it's only going to get harder. I think that we're going to, unfortunately, see more of this type of rhetoric, not just for Chinese American athletes or Olympic athletes, but for many people who worked in between China and America, where there is going to be demands from both countries to choose sides. Chin says ultimately, athletes like Aileen Gu and Drew Yi are raising some really interesting questions. This really comes down to fundamentally, what does it mean to be Chinese? What does it mean to be American? And how is that changing? Big questions that maybe individual athletes can't answer for everyone. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.