China censored a barrage of social media vitriol on Sunday against naturalized figure skater Zhu Yi after her poor performance in the team competition at the Beijing Olympics.
The 19-year-old, born in the United States, fell and missed a jump during her short program, earning a mediocre score of 47.03 points and tenth place out of ten competitors, which set the team back Chinese in the standings.
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After the four short programs and the first free program, China, which was not among the main contenders for the podium, occupies the provisional fifth place behind Russia, the United States, Japan and Canada, while remains to be disputed the free programs couples and ladies, as well as the free dance.
On Chinese social media platform Weibo, the hashtag #ZhuYiFellOver (Zhu Yi fell) had over 230 million views before it was deactivated.
Another hashtag, #ZhuYiMessedUp (Zhu Yi failed) remained accessible and garnered over 80 million views.
Chinese netizens were very critical of Zhu's poor performance, with some questioning the controversial decision to select her over compatriot Chen Hongyi.
“
Chen Hongyi is much better than her.
I don't know why such a person was allowed to represent China
,” one Weibo user wrote.
“
I think as I missed the first jump, I was a bit tense and felt a lot of pressure to do that last jump, and unfortunately I missed it
,” Zhu reacted.
Zhu, who grew up in a Chinese immigrant family in the United States, began representing China in 2018.
Her father, Zhu Songchun, is a leading artificial intelligence (AI) specialist who returned to China to lead a key research institute in 2020. In recent years, Beijing has encouraged overseas Chinese experts to return. in their country to help develop strategic industries like AI.
Several netizens have speculated that Zhu Yi's selection to the team may be related to his father's return.
“
Congratulations to the Chinese figure skating team for making such a contribution to the field of computing!
“wrote one of them.