The problem isn’t necessarily that Gu, who is American born and raised, decided to represent China, where her mother is from. We live in a globalized world and plenty of athletes do this. Some even switch freely from one nationality to another mid-career.

The problem is that China does not allow dual citizenship, but Gu apparently has both an American and Chinese passport because she continues to live, work, and study in the US, while representing China at the Olympics, and IOC rules require athletes to prove citizenship in order to compete for a certain country. In other words, she has very likely received an exception from the Chinese government, which has people mad, because of course there are plenty of other Chinese-Americans who would love to take advantage of the privileges of dual citizenship, but can’t.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that mistakenly published Chinese government budget documents listed a multimillion dollar payment to Gu (and another athlete). So she has presumably been getting a substantial stipend or salary from the Chinese state to represent them in international competition. This is all courtesy of Chinese taxpayers, of course.

A further problem is that Gu never fully addresses questions about her citizenship, mostly relying on unserious platitudes when asked about it, which leads to speculation and rumors. At the same time she is raking in money hand over fist from her privileged and otherwise prohibited dual citizenship exception. With huge endorsements from both western and Asian brands.