U.S. gold medalist Alysa Liu and her Chinese family have a story of dissent, standing up for the Uyghurs, and being harassed by CCP spies.
by Massimo Introvigne
The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics have concluded, but the most unusual story from these Games is not about a disputed score, a judging scandal, or a world record. It revolves around a young American athlete who won gold while a man once hired by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on her family was being prosecuted back home in the United States.
Alysa Liu, now 20, has always skated with incredible lightness, but few spectators understood the burden she carried off the ice. Long before she became the United States’ newest Olympic champion, she was the daughter of a Chinese dissident who fled his country after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Before stepping onto the podium in Milan, she had been watched—not by judges or fans—but by agents acting on behalf of the Chinese state.
Her story highlights transnational repression, the Chinese Communist Party’s long reach, and the remarkable resilience of a family that refused to be intimidated.
Alysa’s father, Arthur Liu, was a student leader in Guangzhou in 1989. He organized demonstrations and hunger strikes in support of the Beijing students who were later massacred in Tiananmen Square. When the crackdown began, he found himself on a “most wanted” list. Interrogated, threatened, and followed, he knew prison was inevitable.
His escape sounds like a scene from a thriller: a nighttime dash to a small harbor, a smuggler’s boat faster than the patrol vessels, a two-hour sprint across open water, and finally the blinding lights of Hong Kong—“paradise on earth” at that time (much less today), as he later described it. From there, he made his way to the United States, earned a law degree, and raised five children as a single father.
But the past often catches up. In 2022, months before Alysa competed in the Beijing Winter Olympics, Arthur received a call from a man claiming to be a U.S. Olympic official. The caller requested copies of the family’s passports—an unusual request that Arthur refused. His instincts were right. U.S. prosecutors later charged five men with working for the Chinese government to surveil and intimidate dissidents in the U.S.
One of them, Matthew Ziburis, was allegedly assigned to monitor the Liu family.
In the criminal complaint, Arthur is labeled “Dissident 3.” Alysa is noted as “family member.”
For a teenager preparing for the biggest competition of her life, this revelation felt surreal. She later joked that it seemed like a prank show—except it wasn’t. It served as a reminder that the Chinese government’s campaign against dissidents does not stop at its borders and does not spare their children.
There was another detail, less public but very relevant: the Chinese government was aware of an Instagram post Alysa made about human rights violations against Uyghurs. For a regime sensitive to criticism, especially from high-profile figures, this was enough to put her on a list.
Alysa Liu was not just a dissident’s daughter. She was a young American athlete who publicly acknowledged the suffering of a persecuted minority. That combination made her a target.
When Alysa competed in Beijing in 2022, she finished sixth—a remarkable achievement for a teenager. But the real story unfolded off the ice. Her father later said he traveled to China knowing the risks. He had once fled the country under the threat of imprisonment; now he returned as the parent of an Olympian, aware that agents had already tried to gather information about his family.
The contrast is almost cinematic: a young woman performing triple jumps under the bright Olympic rink lights, while in the shadows, a foreign government monitored her family’s movements.
Fast forward to 2026. Alysa Liu arrived in Italy older, stronger, and fully aware of the strange chapter that had preceded her. She skated brilliantly in the short program and delivered a long program that brought the arena to its feet. When the scores appeared, she was the Olympic champion.
While she stood on the podium in Milan, the man who had once been hired to spy on her family was being prosecuted in the United States.
It is rare for an Olympic gold medal to intertwine with a federal criminal case. It is even rarer for the athlete to be the daughter of a man who once fled China in a smuggler’s boat. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the story is Alysa’s reaction. When asked how she would portray this saga in a possible Hollywood movie, she said she would like to be a “super cool hero,” but the real focus should be on her father.
His story, she said, is the one that matters.
Alysa Liu’s saga is a reminder that the Chinese government’s campaign against dissidents extends far beyond its borders. It reaches into American cities, into immigrant communities, and even into the lives of children who have never set foot in China.
It also reminds us that courage takes many forms. Sometimes it looks like a student leader refusing to betray his classmates in 1989. Sometimes it looks like a man gripping the side of a speeding boat in the dark, fleeing toward freedom. And sometimes it looks like a young woman stepping onto Olympic ice, knowing her family has been watched—and skating anyway.
Alysa Liu won a gold medal in Milan. But the deeper victory belongs to a family that refused to be silenced and to a daughter who turned a story of surveillance and intimidation into one of resilience and triumph.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
