$6.6 million she and another American-born athlete earned from the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau last year<\/a> \u2014 an amount that was accidentally disclosed on a fiscal report before it was scrubbed from the Internet, according to the Wall Street Journal \u2014 come with unsavory strings attached?<\/p>\nDoes she really believe that inspiring Chinese women to participate in winter sports will make women\u2019s lives better under a regime that is embarrassingly far behind most of the modern world in terms of political representation, economic opportunity and rights for domestic abuse victims?<\/p>\n
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She\u2019s been asked about all these things, many times over many years in many different venues. And as good as she is on the slopes, she\u2019s even better at Never Going There.<\/p>\n
As she told Sean Gregory of Time Magazine in a deeply-reported feature before the Milan Cortina Games, when asked how she\u2019d respond to a question about Donald Trump putting tariffs on China: \u201cI would just say, \u2018I didn\u2019t know I got promoted to trade minister.\u2019 It\u2019s irresponsible to ask me to be the mouthpiece for any agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n
So we all have to make a choice when it comes to Eileen Gu.<\/p>\n
Do we want to drive ourselves to the brink of insanity with some frothing-at-the-mouth screed about wearing the flag of an oppressive regime, or do we accept her for what she is: A really good skier who has no real bearing on anything that truly matters in either China or the United States and found a way to leverage her talent, her looks and her perfect Mandarin to become a much bigger deal than any other athlete at the Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
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In a small defense of Gu, it is worth remembering that she made the choice to compete for China when she was 15.<\/p>\n
What do you think she knew at 15, born to a Chinese mother who raised her as a single parent? At that age, I doubt she expected it to be anything more than a business decision \u2014 and one that, while undeniably complicated and perhaps morally problematic, has proven to be the correct one for her bank account and the list of sponsors who want to be in the Eileen Gu business.<\/p>\n
Did she have reason to think it would turn into this<\/em>? Did we? People change nationalities all the time in sports \u2014 in both directions. She did it before the brutal crackdowns in Hong Kong, before most people understood the scope of atrocities being committed against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, before COVID. Maybe that doesn\u2019t matter to you, but the context of the choice then is not the context of the choice now.<\/p>\nAnd since becoming an international superstar and four-time Olympic medalist \u2014 with perhaps two more to come here in Livigno \u2014 it is not as if Gu spends her social capital extolling the virtues of the CCP\u2019s censorship regime and economic system. She talks about bridging divides and inspiring young people with her athletic achievements. She very clearly wants no part of the culture war others try to drag her into.<\/p>\n
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It might be cynical as hell, but don\u2019t a lot fans want athletes to stick to sports?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the truth: Gu may wear the Five-star Red Flag on her ski suit, but the only entity she truly represents is Eileen Gu, Inc. To present her as anything more than that to fuel American political outrage on social media represents something almost as obnoxious as she is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LIVIGNO, Italy \u2014 Eileen Gu is probably going to win another medal Monday in the women\u2019s freeski big air final. And she\u2019s probably going to come to the press conference, as she always does, and sidestep any questions about the true nature of her citizenship, the political implications of her choice as a 15-year old … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Eileen-Gu-may-compete-for-China-but-the-only-entity.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20788,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20786\/revisions\/20788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}