NEWNow you can listen to Pak Gazette articles!
Alysa Liu was just 16 years old when she met with an FBI agent at a Japanese restaurant to discover that she and her family were being spied on by the Chinese government.
It was early 2022 and Liu was about to compete in figure skating at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. It was the first time he had visited Father Arthur’s home country, from which he fled as a refugee decades earlier. The Liu family had become a target of the country’s spies due to their involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Alysa called the experience “a little strange and exciting.”
“You know what I mean? It’s so… unbelievable. You know what I mean, that’s crazy,” he said in a panel discussion at the USOPC Media Summit on Tuesday.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON PakGazette.Com
Gold medalist Alysa Liu of the United States of America poses for a photo after winning the women’s world championship during the 2025 ISU World Figure Skating Championships at TD Garden on March 28, 2025, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
“Imagine finding out that at such a young age. I mean, in a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like on some prank show?’ Is this world real? I must be some movie character. But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, because of everything my father did in his activist days.”
She recalled sitting across from the FBI agent who interviewed her at a local Japanese restaurant.
“I went to dinner with her a couple of times and I mostly talk, because I’m also very interested in what she does, like the guys, that’s great for me, I don’t know, just meeting with an FBI agent is a crazy job,” he said.
“You know, and I mean, not many people can do that. So, you know, I have a lot of questions and I’ve met with a psychologist there, not for me because I was very curious about what she does.”
Liu added that the FBI made her feel “safe” throughout the entire situation.
One of the five men charged Wednesday with spying on Chinese dissidents living in the United States, Matthew Ziburis, allegedly contacted Arthur in November 2021, posing as a USOPC official and asking for his and Alysa’s passport numbers, The Associated Press reported at the time.
Ziburis allegedly traveled to California’s Bay Area, where the Liu family lived, to surveil them and try to obtain private information from the family that he could then provide to the Chinese government.
Her father told The Associated Press at the time: “They’re probably just trying to intimidate us, to… somehow threaten us into not saying anything, to cause them trouble and say anything political or related to human rights violations in China… I was worried about her safety. The U.S. government did a good job protecting her.”
Alysa continued competing in the Beijing Winter Games, but with greater security assurances from the State Department and USOPC. She had at least two people escorting her at all times.
MYKAYLA SKINNER OPENS ABOUT JOINING THE ‘SAVE WOMEN’S SPORTS’ MOVEMENT AFTER SIMONE BILES FEUD
Alysa Liu of the United States of America competes in the women’s free skate during the 2025 ISU World Figure Skating Championships at TD Garden on March 28, 2025, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
The figure skating star finished sixth in the women’s individual competition and won a team bronze medal.
Alysa then retired shortly after the Beijing games before making a surprising comeback.
After coming out of retirement in early 2024, she dethroned three-time defending champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan at the World Figure Skating Championships in March. She became the first American woman to win a title since Kimmie Meissner in 2006.
He now has his eyes set on the Milan-Cortina Olympics in February, as one of Team USA’s most dramatic stories.
Alysa Liu spoke openly about Chinese government surveillance. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images, Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images, PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
He does not rule out seeing his life and experience in an international espionage incident adapted to film.
Still, he has some preferences if his story makes it to the big screen.
“They have to make me look like some cool hero or something. And I can’t just be the girl who got spied on and didn’t do anything about it,” she said. “But honestly, I would focus on my father’s story, because his story is great and also like everything that happened because of what he did, so I feel like we have to start with the roots.”
