Liu said he took a stand against China’s bullying by allowing his daughter to compete at the recent Olympic Winter Games, where she placed 7th in the women’s event.
“They are probably just trying to intimidate us, to ... in a way threaten us not to say anything, to cause trouble to them and say anything political or related to human rights violations in China,” Arthur Liu said. “I had concerns about her safety. The U.S. government did a good job protecting her.”
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. A spokesman for U.S. Figure Skating deferred comment to Team USA. The elder Liu said he left China in his 20s as a political refugee because he had protested the Communist government following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Arthur Liu eventually settled in the Bay Area, put himself through law school and nurtured one of America’s most promising athletes., a student was sent to spy on him in the 1990s and ended up confessing what he was up to after Liu took him into his house and helped find him work.