Scott Stinson: The politics of China's foreign-born Olympic athletes – National Post

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BEIJING — An article in the China Daily newspaper on California-born Olympic snowboard star Eileen Gu this week included a few lines on her background.

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“A fluent Mandarin speaker with a Beijing accent, Gu enjoys Peking Duck and homemade dumplings every time she returns to the Chinese capital, and says her decision to compete in a Chinese uniform felt both natural and incredibly exciting,” it read.

The 18-year-old freestyle skiing gold medallist, referred to as Gu Ailing in the Chinese press, is something of a rarity here in that her American heritage is freely acknowledged. That she chose to represent China, the country of her mother, is seen as a positive endorsement of the Communist state, even if a mystery remains around her citizenship. China does not recognize dual nationalities, but Gu didn’t answer a question about whether she renounced her American passport when she chose to ski for China as a 15-year-old. “I feel just as American as Chinese,” she said, in English.

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Elsewhere at Beijing 2022, the host country has been less open about acknowledging the lineage of foreign-born athletes who are representing China here. The men’s and women’s Chinese hockey teams are stacked with North Americans, but there appears to be a concerted effort to make that fact less obvious to the Chinese public. The men’s team spoke to media after one of its earliest practices here, but the following day they were forbidden from speaking to the press after a practice session. On Wednesday, a day before the team’s Olympic debut here, the Team China practice was entirely closed to media. It is unlikely that this was about protecting the secrets of its penalty kill. The idea was almost certainly to keep the non-Chinese speaking players out of the spotlight.

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They are not listed in the Olympic program under their birth names, but have been given Chinese names to be used here. So, Ryan Sproul, a former Detroit Red Wings draft pick from Mississauga, is called Sipulaoer Ruian. Denis Osipov, born in Moscow, is called Aoxibofu Dannisi. Jeremy Smith, a Michigan-born goaltender who once played for the United States at the World Juniors, goes by Jieruimi Shimisi, which is helpfully painted on his face mask. Whether the Chinese people are buying these names is doubtful, given the quite obviously North American appearance of the fellows to whom the monikers are attached, but local officials will not be deterred.

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Zhou Jiaying, a goaltender on the women’s hockey team from Vancouver, and whose usual name is Kimberly Newell — her “previous name,” as described on the Olympic program — started speaking to reporters in English before an aide stepped in to say that she was only allowed to answer questions in Chinese. Her Mandarin is not great, though, which led to a comical scene in which the aide translated for reporters and then Zhou quietly corrected the translations in English.

The subterfuge is understandable, at least for one reason. There have been reports that the Chinese public, while embracing the triumph of Gu, has been less welcoming of other perceived interlopers. Figure skater Zhu Yi, 19, born and raised as Beverly Zhu in the United States but competing for China here, was criticized for her lack of Chinese fluency before the Olympics began and then became a target of outrage after she fell in both the short and long programs of the team event.

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“I guess I felt a lot of pressure because I know everybody in China was pretty surprised with the selection for ladies’ singles,” she said, “and I just really wanted to show them what I was able to do, but unfortunately I didn’t.”

She wept after both falls, which only seemed to increase the vitriol, and the Chinese social media company Weibo blocked the use of a mocking hashtag. In an ironic twist, Hu Xijin, a Chinese newspaper editor who had dismissed Western concerns about the treatment of tennis player Peng Shuai, came to Zhu’s defence online, saying that the harsh criticism was “rude and uncalled for.”

He also noted that “sports-driven reverse immigration is a new product of the times.” That’s an interesting way for a nationalist to put it, as it acknowledges something that the state itself isn’t saying explicitly: that some of the members of Team China have been imported just to help it fill out rosters and compete for medals. And there’s a reason for secrecy there, too. In the months before the Games it was assumed that North Americans seeking to compete for China would have to renounce the citizenship of their birth, given the non-recognition of dual nationalities here. But Gu’s evasiveness on the passport question has brought speculation that authorities gave her a pass on the usual rules given the boost that her switch gave the home team for the Olympics. In the case of the hockey players, there isn’t even speculation. Smith, the goaltender, told reporters here that he was never asked to give up his American citizenship to play for China, which makes practical sense if only because several of the members of the men’s team have no connections to the country, family or otherwise.

At least, that’s what Smith, or Shimisi, said last week, when he was still allowed to talk to media. His Chinese team plays the United States on Thursday. Whether they speak, with their English words, afterward, remains to be seen.

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sstinson@postmedia.com