{"id":75312,"date":"2022-05-03T23:27:50","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T23:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/?p=75312"},"modified":"2022-05-03T23:27:50","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T23:27:50","slug":"eileen-gu-accused-acting-like-foreigner-weibo-post-thanking-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/?p=75312","title":{"rendered":"Eileen Gu accused of acting ‘like a foreigner’ in Weibo post thanking China"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent social media post from Olympic skier Eileen Gu in which she says goodbye to China after months of making it her home for the Beijing Winter Games has drawn both plaudits and criticism.<\/b><\/p>\n

Gu, who won two gold medals and one silver medal while representing China this year, is making her way back to the U.S. to begin her studies at Stanford University. The star athlete deferred a year to participate in the Winter Games.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

On April 27, she shared a\u00a0post\u00a0to Weibo saying, \u201cThank you China,\u201d with emojis of the Chinese flag and a red heart, along with a series of photos from her time in the country.<\/p>\n

The hashtag \u201cGu Ailing posts on Weibo to thank China,” referring to Gu by her localized name, quickly became a top trending subject on the platform,\u00a0CNN\u00a0reported. Within two days, it garnered over 290 million views.<\/p>\n

While many of her fans reciprocated the love, some social media users weren\u2019t as impressed by the way she worded her thanks, accusing her of acting “like a foreigner.” They argued that her post seemed to be her distancing herself from China, as she failed to refer to it in the same way other athletes have in the past, using the words \u201cmotherland\u201d or \u201cmy country.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Ultimately she thinks of herself as an American. She only joined China temporarily,” a top comment reportedly said.<\/p>\n\n

Weibo has since limited search results for the hashtag to mostly positive comments from official accounts.<\/p>\n

Gu, who was born and raised in the U.S., was praised in China for her choice to represent the country her mother is from. Though in doing so, Gu was also\u00a0criticized\u00a0by Americans for being \u201copportunistic,\u201d amid strained U.S.-China relations.<\/p>\n

Gu previously faced\u00a0criticism\u00a0during the Olympics after advocating for the use of VPNs to bypass the country\u2019s social media restrictions.<\/p>\n

Adv<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n