Olympian Eileen Gu received a hero’s welcome in her hometown of San Francisco on Saturday. The 22-year-old served as grand marshal of the city’s Chinese New Year Festival and Parade.
Gu, a champion freestyle skier, has competed for China since 2019, and she took home three Olympic medals for China in the 2026 Winter Olympics. (RELATED: Meet Eileen Gu, The True Villain Of The Winter Olympics)
Some Chinese Americans appear to have warmly embraced the turncoat.
“It doesn’t bother us a bit,” San Francisco Chinatown community organizer David Ho said to The San Francisco Standard, referring to the discourse around Gu’s loyalties.
“There’s dozens of athletes who are American but represent other countries, and so what’s the big deal about her?” questioned San Francisco State University sociologist Russell Jeung, a fifth-generation Chinese American, to The San Francisco Standard. “It’s because she’s representing China and because she’s so good. I think what we need to do is go beyond this exclusive allegiance to America in this sort of xenophobic patriotism.”
With countrymen like this, who needs enemies?
One might imagine that Jeung, being fifth-generation Chinese American, would be fairly well assimilated. Instead, he appears to harbor sympathies for his family’s native country.
Foreigners who wish to become naturalized American citizens must swear the “Oath of Allegiance.”
STEALING SPOTLIGHT: Three-time Olympic gold medalist Eileen Gu served as grand marshal of San Francisco’s Chinese New Year parade, calling the honor “special” as she reflected on attending the celebration as a child.
The American-born skier has faced criticism for choosing to… pic.twitter.com/kZoMp7WSle
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 8, 2026
The oath begins, “I do solemnly swear that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince or potentate, state or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.”
Naturalized citizens must agree to “defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
That is to say: We expect “exclusive allegiance to America” from those who immigrate to this nation. Ideally, their children would share that spirit.
Besides, Jeung’s criticism might be better aimed at China, which formally forbids dual citizenship.
Americans found a perfect point of comparison to Gu in Alysa Liu, the Bay Area-born and -raised figure skater. China also attempted to recruit Liu to compete for them, but she and her father declined. (RELATED: US Olympian Alysa Liu Proves She’s A Fraud Too After Defending American Traitor Eileen Gu)
“It creates this dynamic of the good immigrant/bad immigrant, or the good minority/bad minority,” Jeung said of the comparison between the athletes. “It creates an us-versus-them dynamic that has led to a lot of the polarization and demonization of other immigrants in the United States.”
Yes, there are good immigrants and there are bad immigrants. It’s pretty simple to land in the former category. One can start by demonstrating some loyalty to their (or their family’s) host nation.
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