Kristy Yamaguchi, Brian Boitano, and Alisa Liu skating and say, “I’m not nervous”
Olympic champions Brian Boitano and Christy Yamaguchi praise Alisa Liu and her ability to have fun skating on the ice.
take sports seriously
MILAN — Millions will watch 20-year-old American figure skater Alisa Liu compete for a medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics. What could be more worrying than being watched by Chinese spies?
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted five men on behalf of the Chinese government for targeting Chinese dissidents in the United States. The dissidents included Liu’s father, Arthur, who organized a pro-democracy movement in China before fleeing the country in 1989. According to her father, Alisa Liu was also targeted.
“The weird thing is, I thought, ‘Am I on some prank show? Is this world real?'” Alisa Liu said when discussing the issue at a Team USA media event in New York in October.
A man who claims to be an American. Three months before Alisa Liu competed in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Olympic officials told USA TODAY Sports they called Arthur Liu and asked her to fax him a copy of her passport. Arthur Liu refused.
“I had a feeling that something fishy was going on,” he told The Associated Press in 2022.
According to PBS, prosecutors said Matthew Jibris, one of the five people arrested as a result of the investigation, was hired to keep tabs on the Liu family.
In a criminal complaint filed by the Department of Justice, Arthur Liu told USA TODAY Sports that he is listed as “three dissidents” and Alisa Liu is listed as a “family member.” The Justice Department did not respond to USA Today Sports’ request for information.
Alisa Liu placed sixth at the Beijing 2022 Games and third at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games heading into the long program on Thursday, February 19, making her father’s history part of her own.
“Everything my father did made sense to me,” Alisa Liu said of Chinese spies in October.
riot after massacre
Arthur said he plans to go to the 2026 Winter Olympics with 26 relatives and friends. There was a time when the only purpose of traveling was to keep him safe.
In an email sent to USA TODAY Sports, Arthur said he acted in a way that put him at risk.
Arthur said he learned in July 1989, while studying at Sun Yat-sen University, that he was on Guangzhou’s “most wanted” list. In conjunction with student protests in Beijing, he organized six demonstrations and hunger strikes to promote democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.
The flashpoint was Tiananmen Square, where hundreds of Beijing students and residents were killed by the military.
“I was furious!” Arthur wrote. “How could the People’s Liberation Army use force against their own students and Beijing residents? I also organized protests.”
Arthur wrote that he was summoned to appear at the Chinese Communist Party Youth League office.
“The secretary and her colleagues interrogated me several times,” he wrote. “I said the students are all patriotic and want to do the best for China.
“I refused to reveal to them any more names of students who participated in organizing the demonstrations.…I was willing to take full responsibility for everything that happened since I was once elected president of the Guangzhou Autonomous University Autonomous Student Union.
“For me, it was only a matter of time before I went to prison.”
Arthur said he was being pursued by police and thought prison was inevitable. But one night, he wrote, a man he knew took him to a small port.
Bright light, paradise on earth
Arthur Liu writes that the boat arrived at a port in China at 9pm on a summer night in 1989.
The man who took Liu to the port thought he should leave the country, Liu wrote. According to Liu, those who flee China to Hong Kong face criminal penalties of up to three years in prison or labor camps.
“We got on the boat and he left so fast that all four of us had to hold on to the boat so tightly that the muscles in his chest area were painfully torn,” he wrote. “The boat skimmed over the water, leaving huge waves behind us.
“I heard that this boat was faster than the ones used by the military and border guards to chase smugglers without getting caught. At that time, there was a lot of smuggling between mainland China and Hong Kong. Both goods and people!”
Arthur Liu wrote that the boat first headed into international waters and then turned toward Hong Kong to avoid military attack. After about two hours, the boat stopped near the shore, Liu said.
“The multicolored bright lights illuminating thousands of huge skyscrapers were blinding,” he wrote. “I can’t believe there are so many! The scale is so huge! I felt like I was in paradise on earth.
“We stepped off the ship and stepped into the land of freedom!”
Arthur eventually left Hong Kong and settled in Northern California, where he earned a law degree from Hastings College, established his own law firm, and started a family.
He is a single father of five children, and the oldest, Alisa, said that over the years she has continued to learn about her father’s personal history, in some cases from family members.
“And my best friend’s parents knew about it, too,” she said. “So they told my best friend about it, and my best friend reported it to me and was like, ‘Did you know this?’ And I’d be like, ‘What?’
In October, Alisa Liu was prompted by a reporter to ponder what Espionage would look like as a movie.
“They had to make me look like a super cool hero or something,” she said. “I can’t be a kid who was spied on and did nothing.
“But to be honest, I just want to focus on my dad’s story because it’s so cool.”
She cited her father’s tenacity. “And he’s also brave,” she added.
But now the story focuses on Alisa, who started skating at the age of five.
“She just hit the ice,” Arthur Liu said. “She was just following the adults and the hockey players and making friends with the adults and girls her age and boys her age. She just had so much fun on the ice.”
She will dye her black hair platinum stripes and compete in the Olympics.
“She’s a really creative young woman, full of ideas and imagination,” Arthur Liu said. “I don’t know where that came from. I’m very practical. I’m realistic. I’m just taking things one step at a time.
“But she’s very creative. She loves photography, and I’ve seen some of her pictures, pictures, and they’re really creative. They’re really beautiful and really capture the moment.”
Now, on the world stage, this moment belongs to two people.
