Weeks after Liu made her Olympic debut at the 2022 Beijing games at 16 years old, the Justice Department announced it charged five people for allegedly spying on behalf of the Chinese government in a scheme targeting U.S. residents who had advocated for democracy in China.
Her father, Arthur Liu, told the Associated Press in March 2022 he and his daughter were both targeted, saying a man posing as a member of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee called him and asked for their passport information, which he refused to disclose.
Arthur Liu had protested the Chinese communist government following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and left China as a political refugee in his 20s, settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he raised Alysa and four other children as a single father.
He told the AP he felt China’s alleged spy plot was probably intended to “intimidate us” to not “say anything political or related to human rights violations in China, adding he has “accepted my life to be like this because of what I chose to do in 1989, to speak up against the government.”
Arthur Liu said he learned during the investigation the Chinese government was aware of in a message his daughter had posted to Instagram raising awareness of human rights violations against the Uyghur ethnic group in China, and Alysa Liu said she was approached by a man at the Beijing games who asked her to follow him to his apartment.
Alysa Liu’s trip to the Olympics was her first visit to China, and her father told the AP he would not let the spying plot stop her from going: “This is her moment. This is her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compete at the Olympic Games.”
What Do We Know About Arthur Liu And His Activism?
Liu was born and raised in China’s Sichuan Province in a small mountain village, where he says he did not have electricity. He was a student at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when the Chinese government cracked down on student-led, pro-democracy protests. The Chinese government reported 241 deaths, but estimates from some scholars and independent groups have suggested more than 2,000 were killed. Liu said he helped organize demonstrations and hunger strikes afterward. “How could the People’s Liberation Army use its force against its own students and residents of Beijing? I organized another protest,” Liu told USA Today, learning soon after he was on a government “most wanted” list. He said he was questioned by authorities, but refused to provide the names of any other students who had taken part in protests. “Going to prison for me was a matter of time,” Liu said. In the summer of 1989, Liu said he escaped China to Hong Kong, which he said could’ve landed him in prison or a labor camp if caught by Chinese authorities. He then left Hong Kong for California, where he studied to become a lawyer and opened his own law firm.
How Did Alysa Liu React To The Spying Plot?
Alysa Liu said the incident made her question, “Am I in some prank show? Is this world real?” while speaking with reporters in October. She also joked about the incident, saying the scheme could make for a good movie. “They gotta make me look like a super cool hero or something. I can’t just be the kid that got spied on and did nothing about it,” she said, adding “the main focus [should] be my dad’s story because his story is so cool.”
How Did Chinese Media React To Liu’s Win?
Not much fanfare—or detail. The English version of the state-run Xinhua News Agency published an article Thursday saying Liu won the gold medal with a “commanding free skate,” though the article did not contain any quotes from Liu—while it did quote several of her competitors—and did not mention her family’s ties to China. Liu was only briefly mentioned as the gold medal winner in an article on the state-run People’s Daily website recapping Olympic events that took place Thursday.
News Peg
Liu won two gold medals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, including one with the U.S. figure skating team and another in the women’s singles event. Her victory in the latter is the first gold for an American woman in that event since 2002, and she became the first American woman to medal since 2006.
Key Background
Liu’s journey back to the pinnacle of figure skating follows a brief retirement after she competed in Beijing, where she placed sixth in the women’s singles event, also winning a bronze medal at the 2022 World Championships weeks after the Olympics. Liu, just 16 at the time, citing burnout and saying in an Instagram post she felt “satisfied” with her skating career and felt ready to move on with her life. In the interim, Liu pursued other activities, like hiking through the Himalayas and skiing, which she said had only fueled her desire to return to skating. “I was like, ‘Skiing is really fun. Maybe skating is fun, too. Maybe I should skate a session and see what the feeling is like,” Liu told NBC Sports in 2024, saying it prompted her to call her coach and start training again. She came out of retirement on her own terms, telling her father he would not be involved in her comeback while also choosing her coaches and having a say in her music and competition looks. Many commentators noted Liu’s style of skating in Milan Cortina was relaxed and joyous, with NBC commentator and gold medal-winning skater Tara Lipinski saying during Liu’s final free skate that she has “figured out how to compete without carrying the weight of it,” adding she is “so loose and completely herself.”
Tangent
The alleged Chinese spying scheme also targeted Yan Xiong, who at the time was a congressional candidate in New York, with prosecutors alleging one of the charged individuals had hired a private investigator to find, or fabricate, disparaging information about him. Yan, who lost the Democratic primary, had participated in pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
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