China has spent much of the past five years jailing Hong Kongers for demanding democratic freedoms. The government considers such demands seditious challenges to its authoritarian rule.
Mind you, those Hong Kongers were merely demanding freedoms China promised. This, as part of the infamous “one country, two systems policy” colonial Britain negotiated as a condition for returning Hong Kong to China.
But that hardly mattered. More to the point, nobody could accuse Hong Kongers of even harboring dual loyalties, let alone championing them.
Now along comes Eileen Gu – blithely professing loyalties that would make even the most independent Hong Konger seem like a die-hard Chinese nationalist. After all, if China considers it seditious to say you are Chinese but uniquely Hong Konger too, it must consider it doubly so if you say you are Chinese but American too, no?
Yet here in part is how The New York Times reported on Wednesday on the celebrity worship the Chinese are lavishing on Gu:
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You know Eileen Gu is a hot topic in China when even the transportation ministry joins in the celebration of her gold medal.
So intense was the reaction online to her victory in the freeski big air competition on Tuesday that traffic briefly overwhelmed the servers of Weibo, the popular Twitter-like platform. …
Even before the gold, Gu was a phenomenon. As an athlete and a model, her image is everywhere in China — on television, billboards, apps and video platforms. According to Chinese media reports, she has partnered with more than 20 brands, including Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Company, far more than other A-list celebrities in China.
Not everyone was positive. Like other athletes from abroad who are competing under China’s flag, she has faced questions of whether she had changed citizenship to compete for China rather than the United States, where she grew up.
‘Why doesn’t she dare to answer the question directly?’ one comment said after the news conference where she was asked repeatedly. ‘It’s not hard to say that she has given up her American citizenship, and now she only has Chinese nationality, right?’
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For the record, China does not allow dual citizenship. What’s more, Chinese media have already reported, jingoistically, that Gu renounced her US citizenship years ago.
Except authoritarian leaders are famous for imposing rules on the masses which they allow the elites (e.g., like Putin’s oligarchs) to flout. So it’s entirely possible that, unlike most Chinese, China has allowed Gu to have dual citizenship, so long as she never admits it publicly.
Apropos of which, here is how the 18-year old answered, diplomatically way beyond her years, when asked on Tuesday if she was still an American citizen:
So I grew up spending 25-30% (of my time) in China. I’m fluent in Mandarin and English and fluent culturally in both. So coming here, I really feel there was a sense of coming home. I feel just as American as Chinese. I don’t feel I’m taking advantage of one or another. They understand that my mission is to foster a connection between countries and not a divisive force.
Thus spoke US-Sino Ambassador Gu…?
What is clear, though, is that Gu is making a mockery of the purported pride that has China treating Hong Kongers like Jan 6 insurrectionists; and even more so of the pride that has it perpetrating genocide against Uighurs – in a misguided plan to either assimilate or eradicate them. Yet she’s bigger in China today than the Beatles ever were in England.
But, apropos of pride, this unbridled pride Chinese are taking in Gu has a truly perverse and insidious strain. I mean, let’s face it, besides flaunting her American heritage so unabashedly, she doesn’t even “look Chinese.”
Which is why she might be unleashing a yearning deep inside most Chinese to be more like Americans than any would dare admit. But this is why I fear Gu’s celebrity will be short-lived.
Clearly, not even President Xi Jinping can deny the godsend she has been as the face of his Beijing 2022 Olympics. But all bets are off once the torch goes out.
Gu need only look at the “disappearing” fate that befell China’s most famous actress Vicki Zhao and most famous entrepreneur Jack Ma last year. The public humbling and humiliation in both cases stemmed from the prevailing fact that, in China, according to the book of Xi, there shall be only one celebrity … and that is he.
Related commentaries:
Hong Kong… Beijing 2022 Olympics…
disappearing Chinese celebrities… Uighurs…