From Rink to Spycraft: Uncovering China's Covert Surveillance of Olympic Skater Alysa Liu

The story of how China spied on Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu and her father is a bizarre tale of international intrigue, government surveillance, and the collision of high-stakes figure skating and covert intelligence operations. This twisting saga reveals the lengths the Chinese government will go to monitor and control perceived dissidents, even when they are American citizens thousands of miles away from the homeland.

It all began years before Alysa Liu became an Olympic superstar, when a Chinese operative named Matthew Ziburis was tasked with stalking her father, Arthur Liu, and other US residents deemed opponents of the Chinese regime. Ziburis, a former Latvian-American bodyguard with a shady past, was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to carry out covert surveillance and harassment operations targeting Chinese dissidents living in the United States.