American figure skater Alysa Liu (劉美賢) recently won gold at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Her father, Arthur Liu (劉俊), said in a recent interview with Japanese media that China had approached in hopes that his daughter would compete under the Chinese flag, but he refused, citing China’s human rights record and saying that money cannot buy principles or integrity. 

Alysa won the first individual Olympic gold in women’s figure skating for the United States in 24 years, in addition to helping the U.S. secure team gold. Her father explained that he was contacted ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, when China was recruiting overseas Chinese talent globally. Without revealing details, he confirmed that he made clear his daughter would not represent China.

Liu was born in China’s Sichuan province but fled to the U.S. at the age of 25 after being targeted for participating in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement. He later earned a law degree in California and founded his own law firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

After refusing China’s recruitment offers, Liu said he faced pressure and believes he has been monitored by Chinese authorities for decades. According to public records, Liu was indeed a target of a case in which the U.S. Department of Justice indicted five individuals accused of engaging in transnational harassment and surveillance of Chinese dissidents in the United States in March 2022. 

That year, Liu told AP that he agreed to let his daughter compete in Beijing only after receiving assurances from the U.S. government and the U.S. Olympic Committee that she would have close protection during her time in China.

Liu has organized protests in the U.S. against human rights abuses in China, including the persecution of Uyghurs and Falun Gong practitioners. Reflecting on the nearly 37 years he has lived in the U.S., the country that he said gave him a second life, he said his children could be considered “descendants of the June Fourth generation.”