Quote:
Originally Posted by Traum
That's exactly what China and the IOC refuses to talk about. For this to work, one of the following has to happen:
1) The player / Olympic athlete either renounces his original citizenship and get naturalized as a Chinese citizen
2) The IOC grants the exception to allow a non-Chinese citizen to represent China in the Olympic Games
3) China disregards or grants an exception on its dual citizenship rule by allowing these players to retain their original citizenship while naturalizing them as Chinese citizen
My bet is they are doing #3 while conveniently sweeping all the messy details under the rug. Eileen Gu -- this all-star snow sports skier -- is representing China in the Winter Olympics despite being an American citizen (with a US dad and a Mainland Chinese Mom). Some US department is supposed to publish on an annual basis a list of all former American citizens who have renounced their US citizenship. People have looked into those records in the years prior to the Olympics, and they have not see this Miss Gu on the US citizenship renunciation list. And she conveniently coins the line that "When she is in China, she is a Chinese citizen, and when she is in US, she is American."
Representing another country in these national level games is hardly new. But I don't recall the same degree of sloppiness in following through the proper naturalization process in the past.
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This is nothing new, China granting honorary citizenship for people who would further their world standing. It's not just China that does it really as a lot of countries do it for different reasons.
It came out a few years ago when Jeremy Lin was the hot thing in NBA that China tried to buy his citizenship but he told them no.