Chinese Netizens Deliver Mostly Positive Verdict on China’s Foreign-Origin Olympians

WASHINGTON — 

China’s social media users have responded mostly positively to the sporting performances of their largest-ever contingent of foreign-born Olympic athletes, while appearing to keep mum on the sensitive issue of whether those athletes were allowed to keep their foreign nationalities.

The Chinese Olympic Committee fielded 30 foreign-born and -raised athletes in its 176-strong delegation for this month’s Winter Games in Beijing, 28 of them in its men’s and women’s ice hockey teams. The two other athletes are the highest-profile members of China’s foreign-origin contingent: freestyle skier Eileen Gu and figure skater Zhu Yi, both U.S.-born.

Eighteen-year-old Gu has won adulation in China by securing two golds and a silver, with her second gold coming in Friday’s freeski halfpipe final. Zhu did not win a medal and the Chinese men’s and women’s ice hockey teams did not reach the quarterfinal knockout stages of their tournaments.

Canadian-born ice hockey player Ethan Werek is one of the Chinese men’s team’s 15 foreign-born players, of whom 11 hail from Canada, three from the U.S. and one from Russia. Most of them have Chinese ancestry, while Werek is one of five who do not.

Speaking by phone to VOA in Istanbul on Thursday as he was en route back to North America, Werek said he had seen only positive comments about his ice hockey team role as he translated posts made on his Weibo account. Weibo is the most popular Chinese microblogging site.

“There were lots of positive messages from Chinese fans thanking me and thanking our team. I just wish I knew how to respond properly and thank them truly for the opportunity to represent China,” said Werek, who does not read Mandarin.

Werek’s observation was consistent with posts seen by VOA on the Weibo accounts of two of his U.S.-born teammates Jeremy Smith and Jake Chelios, who also are not of Chinese origin.

Goalkeeper Smith, who injured his leg in China’s 7-2 loss to Canada in Tuesday’s qualification playoff and had to be taken to a hospital, posted a Chinese-language farewell message to his fans later that day. It elicited hundreds of comments, some in English, expressing admiration for his efforts and wishing him a speedy recovery.

Screenshot of Chinese ice hockey player Jeremy Smith’s farewell message to fans on his Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

Screenshot of user comments on Jeremy Smith’s Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

Screenshot of user comments on Jeremy Smith’s Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

Chelios, a defender, had posted a Chinese message to his Weibo account a day earlier, describing his team’s initial 5-0 loss to Canada in a February 13 preliminary round group game as unfortunate and saying “we must do our best” in the qualification playoff.

“Winning or losing is not important, but you let us see the future of China’s ice hockey,” replied one Weibo user in English. “We will pay attention to you and love you.”

Screenshot of Chinese ice hockey player Jake Chelios’ message to fans on his Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

Screenshot of user comments on Jake Chelios’ Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

The foreign-origin ice hockey players likely endeared themselves to Chinese fans by respecting Chinese people and conventions, said Susan Brownell, an American research specialist on Chinese sports and an anthropology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

“They demonstrated a commitment to China just by moving there several years ago to play for a Chinese club. Under circumstances like this, I do think that Chinese people can be honored and flattered that you have chosen to represent China,” Brownell told VOA.

Brownell said Chinese fans also likely did not expect the men’s or women’s ice hockey teams to be medal contenders. They were the lowest-ranked teams in their respective tournaments and secured automatic berths by virtue of China being the host nation.

China’s Mi Le (34) celebrates with Wang Yuting (49) after scoring a goal against Czech Republic during a preliminary round women’s hockey game at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 3, 2022, in Beijing.

The Chinese women’s team won two and lost two of its preliminary round group games. The men’s team lost its three preliminary round group games and its qualification playoff, but its preliminary round loss to Germany was by a narrow 3-2 margin.

VOA did not observe any Chinese social media posts criticizing the foreign-origin ice hockey players, but Brownell said there is a possibility that such comments may have been censored.

Zhu Yi, of China, reacts in the women’s team free skate program during the figure skating competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 7, 2022, in Beijing.

Zhu, the 19-year-old figure skater, drew a deluge of harsh comments from Chinese netizens after falling during her team and single skating events, some telling her to “go back to America.” U.S. and Chinese news reports said China’s internet censors responded by blocking the Mandarin hashtag “Zhu Yi has fallen” and removing some of the most incendiary posts.

Zhu is the only one of the 30 foreign-origin Chinese Olympic athletes whom the International Olympic Committee has confirmed to have renounced foreign citizenship. She switched her allegiance from the U.S. to China in 2018.

It does not appear that any of the other 29 athletes have done the same, despite Article 8 of China’s Nationality Law saying that a person naturalizing as a Chinese citizen “shall not retain foreign nationality.” Athletes must be a national of the country they represent under IOC Rule 41.

VOA did not observe any Weibo posts discussing the sensitive question of whether Chinese authorities bent the law to allow foreign athletes to compete for China as dual nationals.

Ice hockey player Chelios told The Wall Street Journal last week that he and several of his teammates still have U.S. passports. Smith, in an interview with U.S. outlet ESPN earlier this month, said he “told China” that he would “never” give up his U.S. passport and “they said that’s fine.”

In a sign that Chinese two-time Olympic champion Gu also has not renounced her U.S. citizenship, an Olympics.com article published last year in multiple languages, ‘Five things you didn’t know about Eileen Gu,’ ends with a sentence saying that she has “dual nationality.”

China’s Eileen Gu competes during the women’s halfpipe finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 18, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China.

The “dual nationality” reference can be seen in the Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese and Spanish versions of the article. It also had appeared in the English version of the article until it was removed on Feb. 9 or 10, shortly after Gu won her first gold and shot into the international spotlight. The Chinese version ends with a sentence saying Gu is “active in both China and the U.S.” rather than referring to her as a dual national.

The International Olympic Committee did not answer a VOA question about why it removed the reference from the English version of the Gu profile.

Gu has not responded directly to reporters seeking confirmation of whether she is a dual national. In a February 8 Beijing news conference, she repeated a statement that she has made before, saying that she is Chinese when she is in China, and American when she is in the United States.

When asked by VOA if he has renounced his Canadian citizenship, Chinese ice hockey forward Werek also did not respond directly, instead saying “when I’m in China, I’m Chinese.” Smith made a similar statement later when German news agency Deutsche Welle asked him to clarify his U.S. citizenship status following the Chinese men’s team’s 8-0 loss to the U.S.

U.S. news reports cited other North American-origin Chinese ice hockey players as telling reporters in Beijing that they were not allowed to comment on the issue.

“I think this is an experiment for China,” Brownell said, referring to its recruitment of the foreign-origin athletes. “If it works, then a government document declaring an official change in [naturalization] policy will come out in future,” she predicted.

Werek said he sees more work with the Chinese men’s national team in his future. Its next big challenge will be trying to qualify for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, where China will not have an automatic berth as it had this time.

The disappointment of the Chinese men’s team with its Beijing 2022 result shows that it believes it can do better, Werek said.

“There were games that we could have won. So our expectation going into 2026 is that we’re going to be a team that will compete, and we’re excited for that.”

This report was a collaboration between VOA’s News Center and Mandarin Service.

Chinese Netizens Pressure Government About Case of Chained Mother

On December 30, China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency named the Xuzhou “China’s Happiest City” for 2021.

The city in eastern China’s Jiangsu province boasted dramatic economic growth and enlightened city planning, according to Jiangsu.net, resulting in the kind of blossoming that gains nationwide notice in China.

But within days, Xuzhou’s civic pride morphed into mortification when a blogger found a mother of eight chained by the neck to the wall of a hut and exposed to freezing weather. As the Olympic Games progressed in Beijing, the mother’s story went viral, and subsequent missteps by Xuzhou authorities drew local accusations of cover-ups and worldwide outrage.

The mother, Xiao Huamei, appeared in a video on Douyin (Chinese TikTok) shot by a blogger who documents unusual families, in this case, one with eight children, seven of them boys. In the video, behind the alleged father and all the youngsters, Chinese netizens spotted a chained woman.

On January 28, the video went viral. Amid the run-up to Lunar New Year festivities and the Beijing Winter Olympics, shocked netizens demanded answers: Who was this woman? Why was she chained up? How can she have eight kids with her husband given China’s reproductive controls?

Between January 28 and February 10, local authorities issued four reports on the situation. The muddled accounts stirred further public outcry, and many netizens expressed their suspicions that kidnapping and domestic abuse were central to the woman’s case.

Public pressure brought the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to reckoning for a long-hushed-up web of problems, such as the human trafficking resulting from the imbalanced male to female ratio, the result of a cultural preference for boys in a country that restricted families to one child from 1980 to 2013, when the policy began to loosen.

As of Tuesday, China’s social media platform Weibo was censoring the tag “Xiao Huamei,” and while discussion was allowed, the subject has been blocked from the hot topic list.

An official in the CCP Xuzhou Propaganda Unit told VOA Mandarin that authorities were investigating the case.

Understanding of laws banning domestic abuse “is relatively weak in rural parts of China, and there’s a lack of social governance, resulting in human trafficking,” the CCP official, who identified himself only as Mr. Xu, said.

“But we are working on it now. Please give us some space to get a clear picture,” he added.

Four conflicting reports

Xuzhou authorities have issued four contradictory reports since the woman was first seen on video.

County-level authorities issued the first two, which emphasized the woman had been diagnosed as mentally ill and dismissed concerns that she was being trafficked.

In the first report, published January 28, the same day the video went viral in China, authorities said the woman, a local resident, was married to a man named Dong Zhimin. The couple had eight children, said the report, which also stressed she had a serious mental illness.

A January 30 report said the woman was a beggar taken in by Dong’s father in June 1998. Although the local birth planning unit had performed “birth control measures” after the woman bore her first and second child, “both failed due to her physical condition

On February 7, city-level authorities reversed the second report and gave the woman’s name as Xiao Huamei, or “Little Plum Blossom,” which in Chinese sounds more like a nickname than a proper name.

This report, the third, said the woman came from a village in southern China’s Yunnan province, and in 1996, her mother had asked a woman identified only as Ms. Sang to take her daughter to Jiangsu province for treatment of her mental illness. The daughter disappeared, and Ms. Sang failed to inform Xiao’s parents or the local police.

Chinese netizens were not buying what the reports were selling.

“So all the previous investigation reports are lies!” one netizen said.

“How do you explain the chain on her neck?” asked another. “And how did they manage to get married if she’s mentally ill?”

“She went missing and no one cared to tell her family? And this is not human trafficking?” yet another netizen opined.

Facing unrelenting public outcry, the Xuzhou authorities on Thursday released the fourth, and latest, report. In it, they state that Xiao Huamei is a victim of human trafficking, and that three people have been arrested in connection with the case, including her husband, Dong, who has been charged with illegal detention. Ms. Sang and her husband have been charged with human trafficking

Continued pressure

Many netizens praised the latest report as a step closer to the truth. Others were angry that the authorities acted only after public outcry. Some still have questions.

“We need follow-ups. What’s her age? Where’s their marriage license?” one netizen asked.

“We need to see proof other than a report. If this is not the final investigation and the results are wrong again, someone needs to be held accountable,” another commenter wrote.

Xu, with the CCP Xuzhou Propaganda Unit, told VOA Mandarin on Friday that social services have the mother and her eight children in care.

Xu said that because of limited time and resources, the first two reports didn’t provide clear picture of the facts, which led to the conclusion that she wasn’t being trafficked.

“But now we are actively pursuing this case. I hope netizens and media can give us some room to conduct the investigation and not pressure us too hard,” he said.

Yao Cheng, a former lieutenant colonel of the CCP’s Navy Command and a women’s right activist, told VOA Mandarin that a third party needs to conduct the investigation to guarantee transparency.

“If the CCP is really confident in itself, it needs to allow other international organizations to conduct the investigation so people will actually believe the result,” he told VOA. Yao volunteered for the New York-based Women’s Rights in China, a nongovernmental organization, from 2007 to 2016.

Yao also pointed out that China’s longtime one-child policy has resulted in an imbalanced male to female ratio, especially in rural areas, where people value sons over daughters.

The “natural sex ratio” at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls, according to the World Health Organization, because a few extra males are needed to offset their tendency to die at a younger age than females. But in China, the ratio has sometimes exceeded 120 boys for every 100 girls. The result is that in 2020, there were 34.9 million more males than females in China, making it a challenge for men to find a wife, especially in China’s rural areas, where gender imbalance is even greater, according to the BBC.

“The gender imbalance has resulted in more human trafficking of women in China’s rural areas,” Yao said. “Authorities and police usually turn a blind eye to these activities, and some even profit from it.”