{"id":1566,"date":"2024-08-08T03:49:29","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T03:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=1566"},"modified":"2024-08-08T03:49:29","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T03:49:29","slug":"hong-kong-gold-medalist-retires-after-pro-china-thesis-uproar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=1566","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong Gold Medalist Retires After Pro-China Thesis Uproar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"7338c441e15c354d952bdfef2559ec72\"\u00a0Hong Kong Olympic gold medalist Vivian Kong<\/a><\/span><\/span> said she would quit her fencing career days after controversy erupted over her apparent support for Beijing\u2019s crackdown on the city\u2019s pro-democracy movement, underscoring political tensions in the Asian finance hub.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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An academic paper purported to be her master\u2019s thesis showed that Kong, one of two athletes from the city to pick up a gold medal from the Paris Games, condemned 2014 protests calling for freer elections. The document began circulating last week and prompted some fans to turn their back on the athlete after initially celebrating her victory in women\u2019s \u00e9p\u00e9e last month.<\/p>\n

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Nathan Law, a self-exiled former lawmaker and a student leader of the demonstrations, said Friday he made a mistake in congratulating Kong on her triumph, describing her political stance as \u201cextremely problematic.\u201d Many users on LIHKG, a forum popular with supporters of the 2014 movement, satirized Kong after embracing her as a pride of the former British colony.<\/p>\n

Kong hasn\u2019t publicly commented on the episode and didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment. The 30-year-old Stanford graduate said in an Instagram post she would start a charity to promote sports to children.<\/p>\n

The paper, submitted to Renmin University in Beijing in 2021, argued that protesters\u2019 \u201cchaos and illegal acts\u201d threatened national security. It hailed a new national security law for eliminating \u201canti-China and anti-Hong Kong powers\u201d linked to the 2014 movement, where demonstrators blocked key thoroughfares to wrest political concessions from authorities.<\/p>\n

The clampdown led to the jailing of dozens of democracy advocates, and a subsequent rewriting of election rules all but ensured only pro-Beijing candidates could run for office. Law left the city for London, where he was granted political asylum.<\/p>\n

The debate over Kong has divided the city, with those lamenting a loss of political freedoms disavowing her and those supporting Beijing\u2019s action backing the fencer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rabid attacks on Vivian\u2019s political beliefs are an ugly reflection of the perversity and deformity of these fawning puppets of external powers,\u201d said Regina Ip, an official adviser.<\/p>\n

Hong Kong has had its best Olympics in history, with two golds and two bronzes so far. Kong and fellow fencer Edgar Cheung are each set to receive a HK$6 million ($771,000) reward for winning a gold medal from the Hong Kong Jockey Club.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Hong Kong Olympic gold medalist Vivian Kong said she would quit her fencing career days after controversy erupted over her apparent support for Beijing\u2019s crackdown on the city\u2019s pro-democracy movement,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264,261],"tags":[371,391,407],"views":74,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1568,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions\/1568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}