People on social media in China and the West can’t stop comparing Alysa Liu and Eileen Gu, two of the biggest stars at the Winter Olympics. It’s hard not to. Both were born and raised in the Bay Area. Both have a parent from China. Both are sports prodigies.

中美社交媒体上的网民热衷于将冬奥会最闪耀的两颗明星——刘美贤和谷爱凌进行对比。这确实很难避免：两人都在湾区出生长大，都是体育神童，父母中都有一方来自中国。

In Milan, Ms. Liu, 20, became the first American in 24 years to win gold in women’s figure skating, and she added a second gold in the team event. Ms. Gu, 22, won one gold and two silvers in freestyle skiing.

在米兰冬奥赛场，20岁的刘美贤成为24年来首位夺得女子花样滑冰金牌的美国人，她还在团体赛中随队获得了一枚金牌。22岁的谷爱凌则在自由式滑雪项目中摘得一金两银。

The difference: Ms. Liu, whose father was a Tiananmen-era dissident who fled China for the United States in 1989, was on Team U.S.A. Ms. Gu, who obtained a Chinese passport in 2019, chose to represent China.

不同之处在于：刘美贤的父亲是天安门事件时期的异见人士，于1989年逃往美国，她代表美国队参赛；谷爱凌于2019年获得中国护照，选择代表中国出战。

In the United States, many people celebrated Ms. Liu’s performance as a win for liberty, while some, like the former National Basketball Association player Enes Kanter Freedom and various conservative media figures, have called Ms. Gu a traitor. Several politicians have accused her of supporting America’s adversary.

在美国，许多人将刘美贤的表现赞誉为自由的胜利；前NBA球员埃内斯·坎特·自由和各类保守派媒体人士则斥责谷爱凌为叛徒。几位政治人士甚至指责她支持美国的对手。

On the Chinese internet, the treatment of the two women was largely reversed. On the Chinese social media platform Weibo, for instance, a user based in Guangdong commented, “Eileen Gu is a hero of China while Alysa Liu is a descendant of an anti-China figure.”

在中国互联网上，对两人的评价完全反转。例如，在社交平台微博上，一名广东用户评论道：“谷爱凌是中国的英雄，刘美贤是反华分子的后代。”

The reaction is both unfortunate and predictable. As the United States and China intensify a geopolitical rivalry that could determine global leadership deep into the 21st century, nationalism on both sides has intensified.

这种反应既令人遗憾，又在预料之中。随着中美两国可能决定21世纪全球领导权的地缘政治竞争愈演愈烈，双方的民族主义情绪也随之升温。

The uncomfortable comparison so many are making between Ms. Liu and Ms. Gu speaks to more than sport. It exposes questions of heritage, loyalty and identity, thrusting the two athletes into the politics of both countries. Much of the commentary is a proxy for rival nationalism: on the American side, increasingly vocal demands that immigrants prove their allegiance; on the Chinese side, an insistence that Chinese ethnicity demands loyalty and that dissent is betrayal.

许多人对刘美贤和谷爱凌进行这种令人不适的对比，其意义已超出了体育本身。它揭示了关于血统、忠诚和身份认同的问题，将两名运动员推向了两国的政治风口浪尖。许多评论已成为对抗性民族主义的代名词：在美国，要求移民证明忠诚的呼声日益高涨；中国则坚持认为华裔血统就必须效忠，异见即是背叛。

The Chinese Communist Party has long advanced an ethnonationalist idea of belonging: that people of Chinese descent, wherever they reside and whatever passport they hold, remain part of the Chinese nation. Under Xi Jinping, who took full power in 2013, this principle has strengthened: Ethnicity has become a bond that carries expectations of loyalty.

中国共产党长期推行一种血缘民族主义的归属观：无论华裔身处何方、持有何种护照，始终是中华民族的一部分。在2013年全面掌权的习近平领导下，这一原则得到了强化：族裔身份已成为一种承载忠诚期待的纽带。

刘美贤在米兰滑冰场参加训练。

Many Chinese people, in and outside the country, who criticize or question official Beijing positions, not only political activists but journalists, too, are invariably labeled sellouts or worse.

无论身处国内还是海外，许多批评或质疑北京官方立场的华人——不仅是政治活动人士，连记者也不例外——无不被贴上卖国贼或更难听的标签。

This is worth keeping in mind when Americans call Ms. Gu a traitor. They’re borrowing the Chinese Communist Party’s vocabulary and adopting its framework of birthplace loyalty.

当美国人称谷爱凌为叛徒时，这一点值得警惕：他们借用了中国共产党的词汇，并采纳了那种“出生地效忠”的框架。

The ethnonationalist philosophy also explains the scale of China’s investment in athletes of Chinese heritage. Of the 48 players on China’s men’s and women’s Olympic hockey teams in 2022, 22 were naturalized athletes with Chinese lineage.

这种血缘民族主义理念也解释了中国在华裔运动员上的巨大投入。在2022年冬奥中国男女冰球队的48名球员中，有22名是华裔归化运动员。

Ms. Gu was the most visible example of this recruitment effort. When she switched to represent China in 2019, she became a geopolitical asset for Beijing.

谷爱凌是这一招募行动中最显眼的例子。当她在2019年转而代表中国参赛时，她便成为了北京的地缘政治资产。

A Beijing city government document published last year showed that the municipal sports bureau planned to pay Ms. Gu and one other American-born athlete competing for China a combined $14 million over three years. Their names were later scrubbed from the record after it drew public criticism. The episode offered a rare glimpse into how the state invests in athletic success as a form of soft power.

去年发布的一份北京市政府文件显示，市体育局曾计划在三年内向谷爱凌和另一位代表中国参赛的美籍华裔运动员支付近亿元人民币。在引起公众批评后，两人的名字随后从记录中被删除。这一插曲让人罕见地窥见中国如何将体育成功作为一种软实力进行投资。

If Ms. Gu’s case illustrates how the state embraces certain members of the Chinese diaspora, Ms. Liu’s family story illustrated how it treats others.

如果说谷爱凌的案例说明了中国如何接纳某一些海外华人，刘美贤的家族故事则说明了它如何对待另一些群体。

谷爱凌在奥运会前进行训练。

Her father, Arthur Liu, was a student activist who ended up on the government’s most wanted list after the Tiananmen crackdown. He fled to the United States, became a lawyer and raised five children as a single father. Alysa is the oldest. She started skating at 5 and became national champion at 13. Mr. Liu said in media interviews that he had been approached about having Alysa represent China but declined out of concerns about the country’s human rights record.

她的父亲刘俊曾是一名学生领袖，在天安门镇压后被列入政府头号通缉名单。他逃往美国成为一名律师，并作为单身父亲抚养了五个孩子，刘美贤是长女。她五岁开始滑冰，13岁便成为全美冠军。刘俊在媒体采访中表示，曾有人接洽希望刘美贤代表中国参赛，但他因担忧该国的人权记录而拒绝了。

Before the 2022 Beijing Olympics, it was reported at the time, U.S. authorities informed Mr. Liu that he and Alysa were targets of a Chinese government-linked surveillance and harassment effort. The U.S. government provided protection for Alysa during the games. She was 16. It was her first trip to China.

据当时的报道，在2022年北京冬奥会前，美国当局告知刘俊，他和刘美贤成为与中国政府有关联的监视和骚扰行动的目标。美国政府在比赛期间为刘美贤提供了保护。那时她16岁，是第一次来到中国。

Mr. Liu also said he had learned that Beijing was aware that his daughter had once posted an Instagram message about the government’s crackdown on the ethnic minority Uyghurs in China.

刘俊还表示，他获悉北京方面知道他的女儿曾在Instagram上发布过一条关于政府镇压中国少数民族维吾尔人的消息。

When Ms. Liu won gold medals in Milan, she became a problem that China’s censorship apparatus could not quite solve. Praise for her skating on the internet in China was often followed by vague warnings, usually from commenters, to “look up her family background and political orientation.” They couldn’t be more specific and had to resort to euphemisms and coded language because references to June 4, 1989, the date of the Tiananmen massacre, are heavily censored. She is sometimes called a “second-generation anti-China figure.”

当刘美贤在米兰赢得金牌时，她成了中国审查机构无法彻底解决的一个麻烦。中国互联网上，对她滑冰技术的赞美往往伴随着模糊的警告，评论者通常提醒人们去“查查她的家庭背景和政治取向”。他们无法说得更具体，只能借助于委婉语和暗号，因为对1989年6月4日天安门事件这一日期的提及是被严厉审查的。她有时被称为“反华二代”。

If parts of China struggle with how to absorb Ms. Liu’s story, parts of the United States struggle to understand Ms. Gu’s. Their underlying logic — that identity carries duty — sounds familiar to the ears of many Chinese.

如果说中国部分群体难以接纳刘美贤的故事，美国部分群体也难以理解谷爱凌的故事。但他们的底层逻辑——身份承载着义务——对许多中国人来说听起来非常耳熟。

At the same time, some on the American political left risk flattening all criticism of Ms. Gu as racism, sidestepping questions about how authoritarian governments deploy athletes and soft power.

与此同时，美国政治左翼中的一些人将所有针对谷爱凌的批评都简化为种族主义，这带来一种风险——有可能回避了关于威权政府如何利用运动员和软实力的问题。

Ms. Gu grew up with feet in both worlds, but the rivalry between Washington and Beijing has narrowed the space for dual belonging.

谷爱凌在两个世界中长大，但华盛顿与北京之间的对抗挤压了这种双重归属的空间。

She spent most summers in Beijing, her mother’s hometown. She speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and in 2019, at 15, became a naturalized Chinese citizen, joining Beijing’s effort to project national strength on the global stage. It proved to be a lucrative arrangement for both sides. Ms. Gu has won six Olympic medals for China and became one of the highest-earning female athletes in the world, with most of her sponsors being Chinese brands and global brands targeting the Chinese market.

她大部分夏天都在母亲的家乡北京度过。她能讲流利的普通话，并在2019年15岁时入籍成为中国公民，加入了北京向全球展示国家实力的行动。事实证明，这对双方都是一笔划算的买卖。谷爱凌为中国赢得了六枚奥运奖牌，成为世界上收入最高的女运动员之一，她的赞助商大多是中国品牌以及针对中国市场的全球品牌。

Ms. Gu has declined to comment on her citizenship status — Chinese law forbids dual citizenship — and on China’s human rights record. Time magazine asked her recently about the treatment of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. She replied that she did not think it was her business to comment. She was not an expert, she said, and reaching a conclusion would require extensive research and a visit to the region in China.

谷爱凌一直拒绝评论她的国籍状态（中国法律禁止双重国籍）以及中国的人权记录。《时代》杂志最近询问她关于新疆维吾尔人的待遇问题。她回答说，她认为评价这些并非她的职责。她说自己不是专家，要得出结论需要进行广泛的研究并实地考察中国该地区。

Her response set off criticism from human rights activists. “Choosing who you represent is a personal decision. No one is a traitor for that,” wrote the Digital Citizens for Human Rights, an X account that focuses on China. “You don’t need to speak for power. But you cannot claim innocence while benefiting from it.”

她的回应引发了人权活动人士的批评。关注中国的X账号“数字公民”写道：“选择代表谁是个人的决定，没人因此就是叛徒。你不需要为权力发声，但不能在受益于权力时声称自己清白无辜。”

Even on Chinese social media, Ms. Gu is a divisive figure. While many Chinese people hail her as a hero and address her adoringly as the “snow princess,” some criticize her for having the privilege of being “a part-time Chinese” — being Chinese when it is profitable and American when it is convenient.

即使在中国社交媒体上，谷爱凌也是一个充满争议的人物。虽然许多中国人尊称她为英雄，亲切地称她为“冰雪公主”，但也有人批评她拥有“兼职中国人”的特权——在有利可图时做中国人，在方便时做美国人。

“She gets to have it both ways. Must be nice,” one commenter wrote on Weibo, the Chinese internet platform.

“她两家通吃。一定很棒吧，”有人在微博上写道。