Couldn’t she do that without dumping her citizenship? For example, in basketball, Kobe Bryant and Lebron James are huge icons in China and generate significant amount of revenue. Plus, based on what I’ve seen on Douyin and BiliBili, those guys are really inspirational for many young Chinese basketball players regardless of their background. So I don’t think she really needed to dump her citizenship if she wanted to be an “ambassador” for US-China cultural relations.I agree the NYT story is relatively better than other similar articles from ESPN, The Economist etc., which are bitter, salty, and sour. It's also better than other NYT reports on China lately, surprising.
I feel that Eileen Gu story could have been a very good, inspiring story that unites the US and China. Eileen perfectly represents a sort of marriage between China and the US, and a great product of such marriage. Indeed, she owes her success to her raw talent, her US upbrings and her Chinese heritage (the roles of her mother and grandma). Both countries could easily identify her as their own without much difficulties. Just like what the ESPN article said at the end: she would not have become what she is today without the US training and environment, but she would also have not become the celebrity that she is today without China. She can further leverage her influence and likely success in the Beijing Winter Olympic to inspire a generation of Chinese young people and help promote the winter sports that China really needs to develop, the kind of impact that she could not dream of in the US. In the process, she could become a friendship and goodwill ambassador between the US and China that no other person could possibly be.
That is, if that's even in the interest of the US.
In my opinion, there are more reasons to her “defection” than meets the eye. Her single parent family and hardship, Chinese family background, education and care, and experience with racism indicate to me that she didn’t make this decision to dump her citizenship solely because she wanted money and to be a “cultural ambassador”.