Column: Eileen Gu, Communist-Certified Millionaire?

Do not write negative things about Eileen Gu (a teenager who was a triple-medalist in skiing at the Beijing Olympics). You’ll be accused of racism.

Gu was born in San Francisco and raised there. She competed for the USA in her youth, but decided to go skiing for China in 2019. The most pronounced irony of this flip-flop is how she’s cashing in by straddling the two countries.

NBC aired a Gu profile during the games. “She’s made a massive imprint from social media to mainstream fashion….and has netted deals with global luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Tiffany’s.” Gu has deals with over 20 other brands, including Chinese brands like Luckin Coffee and Anta, the sportswear company that doubled down on its use of cotton from Xinjiang, calling concerns about forced labor there “lies.”

CBN Data, a Shanghai-based research firm, estimated that Gu brought in 200 million Yuan (or over $31 million) in 2021 — before her gold medal run. So it’s quite likely she will make at least that much after the three Olympic medals.

But the Associated Press rushed to her defense under the headline “Navigating two cultures, judged by both of them.” Oh, the poor dear. She has a very difficult life.

“The frenzy to ‘explain’ Gu’s choice reflects biases and misunderstandings in the United States about Asian American identity,” wrote AP reporters Janie Har and Sarah DiLorenzo. “Eileen Gu’s stories are just as much about those who tell them than about her..”

This multi-millionaire multinational businessman was portrayed by the AP team as a white victim. “Nonwhite immigrants and their descendants, in particular, face the double bind of being required to completely assimilate in order to be considered American, but also Refusing to accept racist ideas that keep them from becoming truly American.”

It’s not a “double bind,” it’s “double the opportunity for cashing in.”

AP also found an expert to lecture Gu’s critics: Russell Jeung, a professor “who has tracked the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. during the pandemic.” As if Gu is suffering now from “hate crimes”?

Jeung claimed “Part of the Eileen Gu perplexity is that the West is seen as superior and the East is seen as inferior. So why would she want to represent China?” Jeung claimed the hate criminals tell Asian Americans to “go back home,” but now Gu is in trouble for not representing her home, “and so we lose either way.”  

Gu has won in all aspects. She’ll now be a supermodel/celebrity attending Stanford University, her mother’s alma mater. As she is unwilling to answer uncomfortably asked questions, she wins. Who’s her American father? There is no answer. Did the communists allow her dual citizenship? She won’t answer.

She demurs. “Yeah, um, first of all, I’m an 18-year old girl,” Gu said. “I’m a kid. I haven’t even gone to college yet. I’m a pretty normal person.”
“Pretty normal people” don’t make tens of millions. She insists that she is a good person.

If you raise questions about Gu failing to use her mega-platform to speak up for freedom in China, the AP duo have this retort: “And of course pundits in the U.S. have attacked her for competing for China, often in terms that further the Asian Americans continue to be subjected to racial and sexist discrimination.”

This is AP’s way to say “shut up!”