The US figure skater was just getting started, recently winning bronze at the World Championships. Alysa Liu’s decision to resign seems unusual and strange at the same time. Does he have anything to do with a Chinese espionage campaign against her family?
Alysa Liu at the World Championships in Montpellier. The bronze medal will be remembered not only as the highlight, but also as the end of her career.
America’s most famous figure skaters have always known how to add a successful postscript to their athletic careers. Peggy Fleming, the 1968 Olympic champion, not only made good money on professional tours, but also ran a vineyard in California. Michelle Kwan, a five-time world champion between 1996 and 2003, studied political science, campaigned for the Democratic Party and was nominated by President Joe Biden for the post of US Ambassador to Belize in December. Tara Lipinski, 1997 World Champion and 1998 Olympic Champion, has been a busy TV commentator for the past few years, traveling to all the major competitions around the world.
Whether Alysa Liu has a similar perspective cannot yet be estimated. Because the highly talented 16-year-old surprisingly and apparently spontaneously said goodbye to figure skating at the weekend. “I started when I was five years old. Those were crazy eleven years, »she wrote on Instagram and amazed the public interested in sports with her decision to resign.
The paintwork of an unfinished symphony
In fact, Alysa Liu’s career has the air of an unfinished symphony. Due to the regulations on the minimum age in international sport, Liu, who had won the national championship in 2019 at the age of 13 as the youngest American to date, was slowed down by international regulations. Evidence of their impressive performance development was seen for the first time last season. Alysa Liu finished seventh at the Winter Games in Beijing and third at the World Championships in Montpellier.
“I honestly never thought I would achieve so much,” she wrote. She is “satisfied with my figure skating career” and now wants to “get on with my life”, enjoy her free time and soon go to university and study. Sport taught her more about life than she could have expected. But that left her with no regrets. Conclusion: “I’m really glad I ran.”
The decision seems unusual and strange at the same time. Especially since Liu did not go into one aspect at all. Her father, Arthur Liu, a California attorney and political activist who left China after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, was not contacted by the FBI until October 2021. During investigations, the authorities found out that the family was one of the targets of an espionage campaign. Brooklyn prosecutors indicted five suspects in March, accusing them of using illegal means to monitor Liu and other dissidents on behalf of the Chinese government.
Arthur Liu, who is anonymously mentioned in the indictment as “Dissident 3”, gave details to the AP news agency. He had not told his daughter, who also appears in the allegations as a “family member”, before the Beijing Games so as not to frighten her or distract her from the competitions. “Alysa had a very good chance of getting on the Olympic team and we were really scared,” he said.
Although a few days ago a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry dismissed the prosecutor’s actions as defamation and claimed that the allegations were unfounded, American officials had tightened security measures for the figure skater during her stay in China. Alysa Liu was assigned two people to accompany her at all times.
This gave Arthur Liu confidence that his daughter would enjoy the experience in Beijing. Because: «This is her moment. This is your unique chance to take part in the Olympic Games.”
The father saw this as an attempt at intimidation
The indictment describes how far the espionage operation against the Liu family went. Accordingly, the suspects tried, among other things, to get personal data such as the passport number and the pension insurance number required in the USA for interactions with authorities, employers and banks. Arthur Liu saw this as an attempt at intimidation. “They probably just wanted us to stop making trouble in China and say something political or about human rights violations,” he says.
If that was the aim of a campaign launched by China, it was achieved, at least indirectly, with Alysa Liu’s resignation.