Gu is a talented athlete, gifted academically, and, well, gorgeous — she has done modeling campaigns for Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Gucci and has appeared on the covers of Elle and Vogue China. She’s also a traitor.
Gu, who is 18, was born and raised in San Francisco by her American father and Chinese mother. She plans to attend college at Stanford University. Yet she announced in 2019 that she would represent China in the 2022 Beijing Olympics. At the time, China was executing a violent crackdown on pro-freedom protesters in Hong Kong, ramping up its theft of intellectual property from US companies, and putting Uighur Muslims in re-education camps. Gu has conveniently stayed mum on these issues. She chalks up her decision to compete for China to a desire to grow women’s sports worldwide.
As much as Gu would like to pretend her defection is not political, abandoning her home country in favor of its biggest geopolitical rival — which is also accused of horrific human rights abuses — is a statement in and of itself. It’s also hard to believe she doesn’t know what she’s doing when she’s expressed her “outspoken” support for the Black Lives Matter movement, citing concerns about “inequality” and “oppression.”
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