Asked Tuesday about the death of Gao, who dedicated her retirement to helping AIDS patients and orphans, Beijing's foreign ministry praised those who "made positive contributions to the relief and prevention" of the illness.
Chinese social media was flooded with comments paying tribute to Gao, who appeared on a list of top searches on the Baidu search engine.
"She was a great person," one user on the Weibo social media platform said.
"It's a pity that she died in a foreign country for political reasons," they added.
"She said 'one cannot live only for oneself'," another wrote.
"Will some bureaucrats be ashamed?"
Another compared Gao to whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang, who died from Covid in early 2020 after officials silenced his efforts to warn others about the deadly disease, triggering a public outcry.
"When I see Dr Gao, I also think of Li Wenliang," they wrote.
Noting that Chinese state media largely did not report her death, they said: "We don't have journalists, we don't have media, we don't deserve too many good people."
Gao died in New York City on Sunday, Andrew Nathan, a prominent China expert who managed her affairs in the United States, confirmed.
"She had been frail for several years and spent all but a few minutes a day in bed," he told AFP, but added that her health had been stable and her death was "sudden and unexpected".
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